sold an infected house And indeed I might tell you that Truth is a virtue like unto the Plague which will not onely destroy us but make all that know us to shun us I might shew you that the retinue which usually wait upon her are Sequestration Nakedness Disgrace Persecution the Sword and Death it self Bona mens si esset venalis non haberet emtorem saith Seneca And we find it true that Truth is so dangerous and troublesome that if she were to be sold in the market she would hardly meet with a chapman But when I present the Truth as a dangerous displeasing costly thing I intend not like the Spies to bring up an evil report upon that good land Nâ—mb 13.32 as if it did eat up the inhabitants and so to dishearten any man from the pursuit of Truth No the land is pleasant and fruitful flowing with milk and honey go up and possess it But as Antigonus when he heard his soulders murmure because he had brought them into a place of disadvantage having by his wisdom freed them from that danger and brought them to a fairer place where they might hope for victory Now saith he I expect ye should not murmure but praise my art that have brought you forth into a place so convenient So if any under the conduct of Truth be at any time in great streights and difficulties let him but possess his soul with patience under the leading of the same Truth and he shall at last be brought forth into pleasant and delightful places even into the paradise of God For as our Master Aristotle speaketh of Pleasures that if they did but look upon us when they come to us as they do when they turn their backs and leave us we should never entertain them so may we on the contrary say of this Truth If we saw the end of it as we do the beginning we should run after it and lay hold on it with restless embraces For though at the first meeting we see nothing written in her countenance but Wo and Desolation yet if we spend our time with her we shall find her to be the fairest of ten thousand And it is the wisdom of God to place the greatest good in that which to flesh and bloud hath the appearance of the greatest evil And when the beauty and glory of Truth is once revealed unto us the horrour of it will scarce appear or if it do but as an atome before the Sun And now to shew you the fairer and better side of Truth I might tell you Prov. 3.18 14. Matth. 13.46 that She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her that The merchandise of her is better then the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof then fine gold that she is that rich Pearl in the Gospel that She is that Girdle Ephes 6.14 cingulum omnium virtutum as the Father speaketh It not onely girdeth and enricheth the man as Faithfulness shall be the girdle of his reins but also confineth Virtue it self Isa 11.4 and keepeth it within the bounds of moderation whereas Falshood is boundless and infinite and passeth over all limits I might tell you further that Truth is a Pillar and such a one as is both a Pillar and a Foundation too For though we read that the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth 1 Tim. 3.15 yet she is such a pillar as those were in the Temple of Diana which being tied to the roof were upheld by the Temple and not the Temple by them For indeed it is the Truth that upholdeth the Church and not the Church the Truth further then to present and publish it If you take truth away the Church will not be invisible onely but nothing We believe One Catholick and Apostolick Church but that which maketh her One and Catholick and Apostolical is the Truth alone For what Unity is that whose bond is not Truth And how is that Catholick which is not and that which is not true is not at all is but an Idole and so nothing in this world Or can we call that Apostolical where Truth it self is anathematized and shut out of doors No. It is this saving Truth which maketh the Church one Catholick and Apostolick without which they are but bare and empty names without which all that we hear of Antiquity Consent Succession Miracles is but noyse but the paintings of a Church but the trophees of a conquered party but as the vain hopes of dying men or indeed but as flattering Epitaphs on the graves of Tyrants which dishonour them rather then commend them As it was said of Pallas Epitaphium pro opprobrio fuit His glorious Epitaph did more defame him then a Satyre Yea yet further I might tell you how that in some sense that may be spoken of this Truth which was spoken of Christ himself John 1.3 That all things were made by it and that without it not any thing was made that was made not any thing that concerneth our everlasting peace It is it that sealed the promises signed the New Testament and made it Gospel finished our faith gathered the Church upheld it militant and will make it triumphant But all this is too general To make this Truth therefore appear to be a precious merchandise indeed let us consider that 1. It is fit and proportionable to the Soul of Man which is made capable of it and is but a naked yea which is worse a deformed thing till this Truth array and beautifie it is under want and indigence till this Truth enrich and supply it till it give wings unto it as Plato saith wherewith it may lift up it self aloft and flie from the land of darkness to the region of light Whilest our soul receiveth no impressions whilest it doth no more but onely inform the body whilest it is simplex as Tertullian speaketh qualem habent qui solam habent is but such a soul as those creatures have whose soul serveth onely to make them grow and be sensible so long in respect of outward operation we little differ from the Beasts of the field When instead of this Truth it receiveth the characters of darkness the spots and pollutions of the world when it is nothing else but as a table written with lies we are far worse then the brute Beasts When we savour of the things of God Matth. 16.23 our Saviour hath given us the name we are as Devils But when the soul is characterized with the Truth when the true light shineth in our hearts we are Men we are Saints and shall be like unto the Angels the soul is what she was made to be a receptacle and temple of God and destined to happiness Now in Christ Jesus that is in this Truth ye Eph. 2.13 who sometimes were far off 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are made nigb by the bloud of Christ and behold those things which concern your happiness
is a main difference nor can we expect an ocular and visible descent Therefore if we will be taught by the Spirit we must use the means which the same Spirit hath prescribed in those lessons which he first and extraordinarily taught the Apostles and not make use of his name to misinterpret those lessons or bring in new of our own and as new so contrary to them For what is new must needs be contrary because he then taught all truth and what is more then all is nothing what is more then all truth must needs by a lye Nor did he lead them into all truth for themselves alone but for those who should come after them for all generations to the end of the world He made them Apostles and sent them to make us Christians to make that which he taught them a rule of life and to fix it on the Church as on a pillar that all might read it that none should adde to it or take away from it Eph. 2.20 And for this they are called a Foundation and we are said to be built upon them Jesus Christ being the head corner-stone But this we could not be if their testimony were so scant and defective that there were left a kind of necessity upon us to hew and square out what stones we please and lay new ones of our own to cast down theirs withal and to bear up whatsoever our insolent and boundless lusts will lay upon them And now what is become of my Text For if this be admitted we cannot say the Spirit led them For what leading is that which leaveth us so far behind at such a distance from the end thâ—â— in every age the Spirit must come again and take us by the hand and draw us some other way even contrary to that which he first made known And what an all is that to which every man may adde what he please even to the end of the world For every mans claim and title to the Spirit is the same as just and warrantable in any as in one And when they speak contrary things the evidence is the same that is none at all unless this be a good Argument He hath the Spirit because he saith so which is as strong on his side that denyeth it upon the same pretense Amongst the sons of men there are not greater fools then they who have nothing to say for what they say but That they say it and yet think this Nothing enough and that all Israel are bound to hearken to them as if God himself did speak This is an evil a folly a madness which breatheth no where but in Christendome was never heard of in any other body or society but that of Christians Though many Governours of Common-wealths did pretend to a kind of commerce and familiarity with some God or Goddess when they were to make a law yet we do not read of any as far as I remember that did put up the same pretense that they might break a law but when the law was once promulged there was nothing thought of but either obedience or punishment But Christians who have the best Religion have most abused it have played the wantons in that light in which they should have walkt with fear and trembling finding themselves at a loss and meeting with no satisfaction to their pride and ambition to their malice to their lusts from any lesson the Spirit hath yet taught have learnt an art to suborn something of their own to supply that defect and call it a dictate of the Spirit Nor is this evil of yesterday nor doth it befall the weakest onely But the Devil hath made use of it in all ages as of the fittest engine to undermine that truth which the Spirit first taught Tertullian as wise a man as the Church then had being not able to prove the Corporeity of the Soul by Scripture Post Ioannem quoque prophetiam meruimus consequi c. Tertull. de Anim. montanizans flyeth to private Revelation in his Book De anima Non per aestimationem sed revelationem What he could not uphold by reason and judgment he striveth to make good by Revelation For we saith he have our Revelations as well as S. John Our sister Priscilla hath plenty of them and trances in the Church She converseth with Angels and with God himself and can discern the hearts and inward thoughts of men S. Hierome mentioneth others Contra Libertin and in the dayes of our forefathers Calvine many more who applyed the name of the Spirit to every thing that might facilitate and help on their design as Parish-priests it is his resemblance would give the name of six or seven several Saints to one image that their offerings might be the more I need not go so far back for instance Our present age hath shewn us many who though very ignorant yet are wiser then their teachers so spiritual that they despise the word of God which is the dictate of the Spirit This monster hath made a large stride from foreign parts and set his foot in our coasts If they murder the Spirit moved their hand and drew their sword If they throw down Churches it is with the breath of the Spirit If they would bring in Parity the pretence is The Spirit cannot endure that any should be supreme or Pope it but themselves Our Humour our Madness our Malice our Violence our implacable Bitterness our Railing and Reviling must all go for Inspirations of the Spirit Simeon and Levi Absalom and Ahithophel Theudas and Judas the Pharisees and Ananias they that despise the holy Spirit of God these Scarabees bred in the dung of sensuality these Impostors these men of Belial must be taken no longer for a generation of vipers but for the scholars and friends of the holy Ghost Whatsoever they do whithersoever they go he is their leader though it be to hell it self May we not make a stand now and put it to the question Whether there be any holy Ghost or no and if there be Whether his office be to lead us Indeed these appropriations these bold and violent ingrossings of the blessed Spirit have I fear given growth to conceits well near as dangerous That the Spirit doth not spirare breath grace into us That we need not call upon him That the Text which telleth us the holy Ghost leadeth is the holy Ghost that leadeth us That the Letter is the Spirit and the Spirit the Letter an adulterate piece new coyned an old heresie brought in a new dress and tire upon the stage again That he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a strange unheard of Deity and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nazianz. Orat 37. Quis vetâ—rum vel recentium adoravit Spiritum quis or avit c. Sic Macedoniani Eunomiani Ibid. an ascriptitious and supernumerary God I might say more dangerous For to confess the Spirit and abuse him to draw him on as an accessory and
War as Nicippus Sheep in Aelian did yean a Lion God spake to us by peace and we were in trouble till we were in trouble till we were in a posture of war He spake to us by plenty and we answered him by luxury He spake to us by love and we answered him by oppression He made our faces to shine and we ground the faces of the poor He spake to us in a still voice and we defyed the Holy One of Israel Every benefit of his cryed Zech. 11.12 Give me my price and lo in stead of turning from our evil wayes delighting in them in stead of leaving them defending of them in stead of calling upon his Name calling it down to countenance all the imaginations of our hearts Gen. 6 5. which have been evil continually This was the goodly price that he and all his blessings were prized at Zech. 11.13 And then when this light was thus abused our Sun did set our day was shut in that Now that Then had its end Psal 105.32 The next call was in thunder and he gave us hail for rain and flaming fire in our land Such a then such an opportunity we had and we may say with shame and sorrow enough that we have lost it But since we have let slip that time of peace that acceptable time yet at least let us turn now in the storm Psal 107.28 29. Matth 24.29 that God may make a calm Let us turn to him in our trouble that he may bring us out of our distress Now when our Sun is darkned and our Moon turned into blood when the knowledge of Gods Law and of true Piety beginneth to wax dim and the face and beauty of Religion to wither When the Stars are fallen from heaven when the teachers of truth fall from the profession of truth and set that up for truth which setteth them up in high places When the powers of heaven are shaken when the pillars of the Church sink and break asunder into many sects and divisions which is as musick to Rome but maketh all walk as mourners about the streets of Jerusalem when Religion which should be the bond of love is made the title and pretense of war the fomenter of that malice and bitterness which defileth it and putteth it to shame and treadeth it under foot Luke 21.25 When the Sea and the waves thereof roar when we hear the noise and tumult of the people which is as the raging of the Sea but ebbing and flowing with more uncertainty and from a cause less known Now in this draught and resemblance of the end of the World when God thus speaketh to us in the whirlwind thus knocketh with his hammer calleth thus loud unto us Turn ye turn ye let us bow down our heads and in all humility answer him ECCE ACCEDIMVS Behold Jer. 3 22. Matth. 18.7 we come unto thee for thou art the Lord our God For as our Saviour speaketh of offenses so may vve of these judgments and terrours which he sendeth to fright us to him NECESSE EST VT VENIANT It must needs be that they come not onely necessitate consequentiae by a necessity of consequence supposing the condition of our nature and the changes and chances of a sinful world or rather supposing the corruption of mens manners vvhich can produce nothing but tumult and sedition plagues famine and vvar for vvhat other fruit can grovv from s â—â—h evil trees but necessitate finis also in respect of the end for which they are sent For God in vvhose povver both men and their actions are doth not onely not hinder them by his mighty hand but permitteth them and by a kind of providence sendeth them upon us partly for our tryal but especially for our amendment that finding gall and vvormvvood upon every pleasure and vanity of the vvorld and no rest for our feet in these tumultuous vvaves vve may flee to the Aâ—k and turn to him vvith our vvhole heart And certainly if judgments vvork not this effect they will work a far worse If they do not set a period to our sin they are then but the beginnings of sorrow 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Nazianzene the prologue to that long and lasting Tragedy sad types and forerunners of everlasting torments in the bottomless pit As yet they may be but an argument of Gods love the blows of a Father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In 10. Esai as Basil calleth them blows to turn us out of our evil wayes O felicem servum cujus emendationi instat Dominus cui dignatur irasci saith Tertullian De patient 11. Oh happy servant whom God taketh such care to amend whom he thus diggeth about and watereth with his discipline of Affliction whom he thus purgeth that he may bring forth fruits meet for repentance whom he loveth so well as to be angry with him to whom he giveth so great honour and respect as to chastise him Ibid. quem admonendi dissimulatione non decipit whom he thus plainly telleth of his sin and danger and writeth and imprinteth it as it were in his very flesh whom he doth not in his anger dissemble with and deceive that is let alone that he may ruine himself seem to favour that he may destroy him touch not that he may grind him to pieces Nam quanta est poena nulla poena Not to be punished at all is the greatest punishment of all and nothing more deplorable then the happiness of a wicked man For when God is silent and will speak no more then he hath his ax in his hand to cut us down that we bear no more fruit And such a Now such a time there may come when God hath called again and again when he hath spoken to us and spoken within us when he hath spoken to us from his Mercy-seat and spoken in thunder that he will speak no more And this no doubt hath befallen many thousands whom God in justice delivered to chains of darkness to be reserved to judgment whom he would not frown upon whom he would not look upon whom he would not trouble whose eyes he would not open to see the danger they were in but as they colluded and trifled with him so he laught at their folly and madness and left them to themselves to run on with pleasure with hope with confidence untoucht unrebuked unregarded to their destruction All that are lost are not in hell for they that are now there were lost before vivi videntésque even whilst they walkt in the land of the living lost when they were called upon and would not hear lost in the midst of Prophets and Apostles lost in the Church lost in the mercies of God which they rejected lost in the judgments of God which they slighted lost before they were utterly lost lost when they left God and when God left them Judas had his name The son of perdition before he hanged himself and
and so make our seeking a free-will-offering a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savour unto God and make it evident that we understand the language of his benefits the miracle which he worketh which is to cure our blindness with this clay with these outward things that we may see to seek him And this is truly to praise the Lord for his goodness Psal 107. Hos 3.5 this is to fear the Lord and his goodness to bear our selves with that fear and reverence that we offend not this God of blessings Negat beneficium qui non honorat He denieth a benefit that doth not thus honour it and is contumelious to that God that gave it Ingratitude is the bane of merit the defacer of vertue the sepulchre the hell of all blessings for by it they are turned into a curse It loatheth the land of Canaan and looketh for milk and honey in Egypt Oh beloved dare we look back upon former times What face can turn that way and not gather blackness God looked favourably upon us and we lifted up the heel against him He gave us light and we shut our eyes against that light He gave us wealth and we abused it to pride and avarice and vanity He made us the envy and we were ambitious to make our selves the scorn of all nations He gave us milk and honey and we turned it into gall and bitterness He sent the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth the blessings of the right hand and of the left plenty and peace the one we loathed as the Jews did their Manna the other we abused He sent peace and we desired war He broke the sword and we furbished it He placed and setled us under our own vines and figtrees and we were in trouble till we were in trouble till we were in a posture of war He spake to us by plenty and we answered him by luxury He spake to us in love and we answered him by oppression He made our faces to shine and we ground the poor's He spake to us by peace and we beat up the drum He spake to us in a still voice and we defied the Holy one of Israel Every benefit of his spake Give me my price and lo instead of seeking him running from him instead of sanctifying his name profaning it instead of calling upon his name calling it down and forcing it to countenance all the imaginations of our heart which have been evil continually This was the goodly price that he was prized at of us Zech. 11.13 And then our Sun did seem to set our day vvas shut up that Now that Then had its end vvhat can vve expect but that the next Now the next time he should come in thunder give us hail for rain and flaming fire in our land But such a Then such an opportunity we had and thus we lost it And if we have let slip this time of peace this acceptable time yet at least let us seek him now when if we seek him not we shall find nothing but destruction seek him in the storm that he may make a calm call upon him in our trouble that he may bring us out of our distress Seek him now when our Sun is darkned and our Moon turned into bloud when the knowledge of his law and of true piety beginneth to wax dim and the true face and beauty of religion to wither when the stars are fallen from heaven the teachers of the truth from the true profession of the truth when the powers of the heaven are shaken when the pillars of the Church are shaken and broken asunder into so many sects and divisions which is as musick to to Rome but maketh all walk as mourners about the streets of Jerusalem vvhen RELIGION vvhich should be the bond of love is made the motto in our banners the title and pretense of vvar the nurse and fomenter of that malice and bitterness vvhich putteth it to shame and treadeth it under foot Novv vvhen the sea and waves thereof do roar vvhen vve hear the noise and tumult of the people vvhich is as the raging of the sea but ebbing and flovviâ—g vvith more uncertainty and from a cause less knovvn vvhen nation riseth up against nation and kingdom against kingdom nay vvhen kingdomes are divided in themselves in this draught and resemblance of the end of the vvorld vvhen he thus speaketh to us in the vvhirlvvind vvhen he thus knocketh vvith his hammer vvhen he calleth thus loud to us to seek him vve should novv bovv dovvn our heads and in all humility ansvver him Thy face O Lord will we seek Matth 18 7. For as our Saviour speaketh of offences so may vve of these afflictions and terrours vvhich God sendeth to fright us It must needs be that they come not onely necessitate consequentiae by a necessity of consequence supposing the condition of our Nature and the changes and chances of a sinful vvorld but necessitate finis in respect of the End for vvhich they are sent for vvhich God in vvhose povver both men and their actions are doth not onely not hinder them by his mighty hand but permitteth them and by a kind of providence sendeth them upon us partly for our tryal but especially for our amendment that finding gall and wormvvood upon every pleasure and vanity of the world finding no rest for our feet in these tumultuous vvaves vve may fly to the Ark and seek him vvith our vvhole heart For vvhen neither the oyl of God's grace vvill soften and supple our stony hearts nor his Word vvhich is his sword pierce them when we cannot be restrained by the â—piâ—it of meekness then Cedo virgam then he cometh with his rod that if we will not make our selves the children of perdition the smart of that may drive us unto him And certainly if afflictions work not this effect they will a far worse If they do not set an end to our sin they are but the beginnings of punishment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Nazianzene a prologue to that long and lasting Tragedy the sad types and fore-runners of everlasting Torments in the bottomless pit As yet they are but an argument of Gods love the blows of a Father to bring us to his hand O felicem servum cujus emendationi instat Dominus cui dignatur irasci saith Tertullian O happy servant whom the Lord is carefull thus to correct whom he loveth so well as to be angry with him to whom he giveth so great honour and respect as to chastize him But if we lose this affliction make no advantage of it lose that profit which God intendeth by it then he is no longer a Father but a Judge and this punishment is no longer Correction but Execution He hath spent his rods and now he will take his axe in hand and as the Prophet speaketh he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease Dan. 9.27 and for the over-spreading of abominations he shall make
speak of him before tyrants and not be ashamed then he hath cast out a spirit which was dumb But I rather keep me to the words of the Text As he spake these things Doth he not still speak the same things Hebr. 13.8 Jesus Christ is yesterday and to day and the same for ever Nec refert saith the Father per quem sed quid à quo It is not material whose tongue is made use of so it be Christ that speaketh these things And how often doth he speak these things But where is the FACTUM EST that which cometh to pass is scarcely discernable Auditis laudatis Ye hear him speak and perhaps ye commend him Deo gratias God be thanked for that yet But when this is done nothing cometh to pass Semen accipitis verba redditis Ye receive the seed of the Word and all the harvest vve see is but weeds We see it not in the extension of your hands in the largeness of your alms in the lifting up of your hands in your devotion at prayers we see it not in your reverence meekness and patience Well saith the Father Toleramus illae tremimus inter illa We suffer it and tremble at it Your words are but leaves it is fruit and encrease that we require Be not deceived Every good lesson should be unto you as a miracle to move you to give sentance for Christ against the Pharisees and all the enemies he hath against the Pride that despiseth him the Luxury that defileth him that Disobedience that trampleth him under foot Every good motion for therein Christ speaketh to us should beget a resolution every resolution a good work every good work a love of goodness and the love of goodness should root and stablish and build us in the faith In a word every DIXIT of Christ's should be answered with a FACTUM EST from us every work every word of his should be a sufficient motive and a fair occasion to us to magnifie the power of the Speaker in our souls and in our bodies and with this Woman here in the very face of the enemie in the midst of all the noise Detraction can make to lift up our voice and give testimony unto Christ who is so powerful both in word and deed And so I pass from the Motive and Occasion to the Person who from what she saw and heard gave this free attestation A certain woman of the company Here are two circumstances that may seem to weaken and infringe the testimony and take from the credit of the miracle 1. that she was a Woman and 2. that she was but one of the multitude S. Gregory will tell us MVLIER tam pro infirmitate ponitur quà m pro sexa That this word Woman in Scripture sometimes noteth the Sex and sometimes signifieth Infirmity And in the antient Comedians Mulier es is a term of reproch For as the Schoolman hath observed foeminarum aviditas pertinacior in affectu fragilior in cognitione The affections of Women commonly outrun their understanding and they are then most in flame when they have least light Again this circumstance That she was but one of the multitude might have been laid hold on by the Pharisees as an argument against Christ Might they not have reviled her as they did the man who was born blind and received his sight and said unto her Thou art but one Joh. 9.34 and dost thou teach us But such is the nature of Truth that it can receive no prejudice but will prevail against all contradiction though it have but one witness and find no better champion then a Woman Suis illa contenta est viribus nec spoliatur vi suâ etiamsi nullum habeat vindicem saith Arnobius She resteth upon her own basis and is content with her own strength which she cannot lose though she find no undertaker Truth doth not fail though a Pharisee oppose it but is of strength sufficient to make the weakest of its champions conquerer For the foolishness of God is wiser then men 1 Cor. 1.25 and the weakness of God is stronger then men Neither Number nor Sex hath so much power upon Truth as to alter its complexion Whether they be many or few weak or strong that profess it Truth is still the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of one and the same hue and colour Gen. 49.19 As it was said of Gad A troop may overcome it may silence and suppress it for a while but it shall overcome at the last Yet a conceit hath possessed the world That there is a kind of virtue or magick in Number and the Truth breatheth onely in those quarters where there are most voices to proclaim it And many are so bewitched that they think it a gross absurdity for one man in the defense of Truth to stand up against a multitude and they will make this advocate because he is but one an argument against the Truth What would these men have thought of Christ had they seen him among the Pharisees or heard the shout of the people crying aloud John 18.40 Not this man but Barabbas Indeed neither the Paucity nor the Number of professours is an argument to demonstrate the Truth These pillars do not support her We have rather great reason to suspect the doctrine that is cryed up by the voice and humme of the multitude I have much wondred that they who talk so much of the Church have made this a note and mark whereby we may know it For experience hath sufficiently taught us that were it to put to the vote of the multitude we should scarce have any face of a Church at all It never went so well with the world that the most should be best Therefore S. Hierome is peremptory that multitude of associates demonstrate rather an Heretick then a Catholick We may be then well content to hear the Church of Rome boast and triumph that she hath enlarged her dwelling and spred her self from one end of the world unto the other and to lay it as an imputation upon us that our number is so small that we scarce are visible sed illos Defendit numerus junctaeque umbone phalanges The whole world is theirs praeter Italian Hispaniam totam All Italy and all Spain is theirs And besides these and many other Kingdomes which the Cardinal reckoneth up they may take-in the New world for advantage An happiness which we hereticks cannot hope for Non enim debet nunc incipere Ecclesia crescere cùm jam senuerit saith he For the Church cannot encrease now she is old and hide-bound and past growth Who would ever have thought that so sick and lothsome meditations should have dropped from so learned a pen Might not the antient Hereticks have taken-up the same plea when the whole world as S Hierome speaketh was become Arian And himself confesseth that if one province alone hold the true faith that one province may be
be a sanctuary to such as dwell not in Christ 320. How much it concerneth us to try whether we dwell in Christ and Christ in us 321. By this mutual union all His become ours and all ours his 321 322. ¶ Christ must be looked upon and considered not in part but wholly 394. What it is to consider Him as our Priest Prophet King 492 493. What it is for a Christian to remember Christ aright 463 c. The mistake of the world in the manner of receiving Christs Person 523. as great in respect of his Doctrine 524. ¶ Christ was wont to draw his discourse from some present occasion 309. The Scope of his Sermon on the mount 560. He cured mens bodies and purged their souls 572. The end of his Miracles 572 c We must by no means defeat him of his end but cooperate with him 575. Many talk of Christ and profess to follow him but few walk as he did 518. 520. His Example is to be followed by us 510. v. Servant This is the principal standard Rule by which all are to be examined and according to which all are to be squared 1026 1027. Wherein Christ is not to be imitated by us 1026. wherein he is 1027. ¶ We ought to think of Christ's second coming 235. He shall though most put it out of their Creed certainly come to judge all 237. He knoweth mens hearts and all things 277 573. He was despised of old by most forgotten now 237. Why he delayeth his coming 238 239. Christ's second coming is an object for our Faith to look on 240. 735. for our Hope to reach at 242. 736. and for our charity to embrace 242. 736. It will be not for carnal but spiritual and heavenly ends 243. 954. It will be for the Advantage of Angels Men and other Creatures 245 246 His judgment will not be like ours but according to truth 247. The precise time of his coming not to be enquired after nor to be known 248 c. 737. What use we ought to make of the uncertainty thereof 250. 738. It is enough to know Christ will come it concerneth us not to know when 251 252. 737. It is better for us not to know it 252. No reason why either good or bad should know it 252. If the wicked knâ—w the very hour they would be never the better 253. Christ's coming will be sudden 254. When-ever he cometh let him not find us ill employed 254 255. What inferences Flesh and Bloud draw from the doctrine of Christ's coming 256. The belief of Christ's second coming affordeth unspeakable comfort to the godly but the contrary to the wicked 952. Why he foretold the signs of his second coming 1042. How the sight of such signs should work upon us 1045. v. Signs How to prepare our selves to meet our Lord at his second coming 1049. Though Christ deliver-up his Kingdome and be subject to the Father yet his Dominion is everlasting 235. 240. ¶ The doctrine of the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness grosly mis-interpreted and misapplyed 870 c. 993 994. He came to make us happy which neither Nature nor the Law could do for us 716 717. He hath freed us from the guilt and power of Sin 1097 1098. from the rigour of the Moral and the servitude of the Ceremonial Law 1098. Many have a bare speculative knowledge of Christ which availeth nothing at all 723 c. What it is for us to be crucified with CHRIST and to rise again with him 725. Christendome v. View Christian and Christianity A good Christian who 68 69. 78. Every man may be a Christian 661. v. Truth Many would go for Christians that are nothing less 319. The end of Christianity is to draw our hearts from earth to heaven 645 c. 649. v. Religion Popery But alas how many Christians walk quite contrary 652. How Christian Religion is degenerated 915. 1071. The bare name of Christian will do us no good 291. v. Formality Hypocrisy Profession Sin in a Christian is far worse then in a Turk or a Jew 417 418. The sins of Christians cause Christianity to be evil spoken of 913 914. 1071. Christians who live unchristianly are guilty of the bloud of Jews and Pagans 914. 1071. It is not the name of Christian or of Christ that will save us if we dishonour it 915. How strangely most Christians mock God and contradict themselves 921. Christianity maketh a man not morose and sowre but sweet and tractable 504. It doth not discharge us from subjection to our Superiours 639 1102 1103. It is both the most delightsome and the most troublesome calling 1011. A Christian is both the freest and the most subject creature in the world 638. 1101. A true Christian is firm and constant 1111 1112. A strong Christian and a weak one described 458. Christmass-day the great metropolitane feast of the year 1. The antiquity of this anniversary solemnity 2. Church a word much abused 149. Many fruitless disputes about the Ch. 10â—8 Church magnified unreasonably by the Papists 680 601. Prosperity not a mark of the true Ch. 191. 295-298 It is always one and the same how 175. 696. never exempted from persecution 175 c. 709. subject to change 190. What alterations we have had in our Engl. Ch. 191. Of how different constitution Christ's C. is from the Kingdoms of the earth 188 710. It is not our joyning to this or that particular C. or faction rather but our dwelling in C. that can make us Christians 320 321. v. Congregation No discipline so essential to the Church as Piety 320. We must not make the World a platform of the Ch. 191. How the Ch. is to deal with her enemies 194. Of the povver God hath left in his Ch. 225. v. Common-wealth Church vvhy called Catholick 233. v. View How the Church is the pillar and ground of truth since the Truth is the pillar of the Church 600. Even Three make a Church 837. Yea One 836. Churches antiently used 847. how far necessary 581. 846 847. how holy 581 582. 847 c. They should not be abused but used to the right end 582. How vve ought to honour them 849 850. It is an horrible shame that our houses should be trim and Churches ruinous and sordid 850. How the Devotion of the antient Christians in building and adorning of Ch. shameth the neglect of our age 850. Though it be pious to build and beautifie Churches yet in case of necessity Churches may be stripped to relieve the poor 851. Against such as vvould have no Churches 847. Against them that vvill not come to Church 581 c. We must go to Church not for fashion or formality but out of love 853. How devout persons behave themselves in the Ch. 854 855. 857. 864. Reverence is due in the Ch. upon several accounts 857 858. None quarrel at Churches but the proud and Covetous 856. City v. View Col. i. 24. 638. iii. 12. 279. Comely Our first thought
so few instances of Retractation but a Augustine one among the Antients and of later dayes b Bellarm. one more but such a one as did but like some Plumbers make his business worse by mending it So harsh a thing it is to the nature of Men to seem to have mistaken and so powerful is Prejudice For to confess an Errour is to say we wanted Wit And therefore we should flye from Prejudice as from a Serpent Gen. 3. For it deceiveth us as the Serpent did Eve giveth a No to Gods Yea maketh Men true and God a lyar and nulleth the sentence of death You shall dye the death when this is the Interpreter is your Eyes shall be opened and to deceive our selves is to be as Gods knowing good and evil And it may well be called a Serpent for the biting of it is like that of the Tarantula the working of its venome maketh us dance and laugh our selves to death For a setled prejudicate though false opinion may build up as strong resolutions as a true Saul was as zealous for the Law as Paul was for the Gospel A Heretick will be as loud for a fiction as the Orthodox for the Truth the Turk as violent for his Mahomet as a Christian for his Saviour Habet diabolus suos Martyres For the Devil hath his Martyrs as well as God And it is Prejudice which is that evil spirit that casteth them into the fire and the water that consumeth or drowneth them 1 Sam. 15.32 that leadeth them forth like Agag delicately to their death And this is most visible in those of the Church of Rome We may see even the marks upon them Obstinacy Insolency Scorn and contempt a proud and high Disdain of any thing that appeareth like reason or of any man that shall speak it to teach and recover them Which are certainly the signes of the biting of this Serpent Prejudice or as some will call it the marks of the Beast Quà m gravis incubat How heavy doth Prejudice lye upon them who are taught to renounce their very Sense and to mistrust nay to deny their Reason who see with other mens eyes Apul. De mundo and hear with other mens ears qui non animosed auribus cogitant who do not judge with their mind but with their ears The first prejudice is That theirs is the Catholick Church and cannot err and then all other search and enquiry is vain as a learned writer observeth For what need they go further to find the truth then to the high Priests chair to which it is bound And this they back and strengthen with many others of Antiquity making that most true which is most antient Quintil. And yet omnia vetera nova fuere that which is now old was at first new And by this Argument Truth was not Truth when it first began nor the Light Light when it first sprung from on high and visited us And besides Truth though it had found professours but in this latter age yet was first born because Errour is nothing else but a deviation from the Truth and cometh forth last and layeth hold on the heel of Truth to supplant it Besides these Councils Which may err and the Truth many times is voted down when it is put to most voices Nazianzene was bold to censure them as having seen no good effect of any of them And we our selves have seen and our eyes have dropped for it what a meer Name what Prejudice can do with the Many Nunquam tam benè cum rebus humanis agebatur ut plures essent meliores Sen. de Clement 1. and what it can countenance And many others they have of Miracles which were but lies of Glory which is but vanity of Universality which is bounded and confined to a certain place With these and the like that first prejudice That the Church cannot err is underpropt and upheld And yet again these depend upon that Such a mutual complication there is of Errours as in a bed of Snakes If the first be not true then these were nothing and if these pillars be once shaken and they are but mud that Church will soon sink in its reputation and not fit so high as magisterially to dictate to all the Churches of the world And as we have set up this Queen of Churches as an ensample of the effects of Prejudice so may we hold it up as a glass to see our own She saith we are a Schismatical We please and assure our selves that we are a Reformed Church And so we are and yet Prejudice may find a place even in the Reformation it self Rome is not only guilty of this but even some members of the Reformation who think themselves nearest to Christ when they run farthest from that Church though it be from the Truth it self And this is nothing else but Prejudice to judge our selves pure because our Church is purged to be less reformed because that is Reformed or to think that Heaven and Happiness will be raised and rest upon a Word or Name and that we are Saints as soon as we are Protestants Almost every Sect and every Faction laboureth under this Prejudice and feeleth it not but runneth away with its burden And too many there be who predestinate themselves to Heaven when they have made a surrendry of themselves to such a Church to such a company or collection nay sometimes but to such a man I accuse not Luther or Calvine of errour but honour them rather though I I know they were but men and I know they have erred or else our Church doth in many things and it were easie to name them But suppose they had broacht as many lyes as the Father of them could suggest yet they who have raised them in their esteem to such an height must needs have too open a breast to have received them as oracles and to have lickt up poyson it self if it had fallen from their pens since they have the same motive and inducement to believe them when they err which they have to believe them when they speak the truth and that is no more then their Name Orat. pro Muraena Tolle Catonem de Causa said Tully Cato was a name of virtue and carried authority with it and therefore he thought him not a fit witness in that cause against Muraena for his very name might overbear and sink it Tolle Augustinum de causa Take away the name of Augustine of Luther and Calvine and Arminius for they are but names not arguments There is but one Name by which we may be saved Acts 4.12 And his Name alone must have authority Hebr. 12.2 and prevail with us who is the authour and finisher of our faith VVe may honour others and give unto them that which is theirs but we must not deifie them nor pull Christ out of his throne to place them in his room Of this we may be sure There is
them were not an act of our Faith but of our Knowledge Therefore Christ shewed not himself openly to all the people at his resurrection Tert. Apol. ut fides non mediocri praemio destinata non nisi difficultate constaret that faith by which we are destined to a crown might not consist without some difficulty but commend it self by our obedience the perfection and beauty whereof is best seen in making its way through difficulties And so Hilary Habet non tam veniam quà m praemium ignorare quod credis Lib. 8. De Trin Not perfectly to know what thou certainly believest doth so little stand in need of pardon that it is that alone which draweth on the reward For what obedience can it be for me to assent to this That the whole is greater then the part that the Sun doth shine or any of those truths which are visible to the eye What obedience it is to assent to that which I cannot deny But when the object is in part hidden in part seen when the truth we assent to hath more probability to establish it then can be brought to shake it then our Saviour himself pronounceth John 20.29 Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed Besides it were in vain he should afford us more light who hath given us enough For to him that will not rest in that which is enough nothing is enough When God had divided the Red sea when he rained down Manna upon the Israelites and wrought many wonders amongst them the Text saith For all this they sinned still Psal 78.31 and believed not his wondrous works The Pharisees saw Christ's miracles yet would have stoned him They saw him raise Lazarus from the dead and would have killed them both The people said He hath done all things well Mar. 7.37 John 7.48 yet these were they that crucified the Lord of life Did any of the Pharisees believe in him We might ask Did any of his Disciples believe in him Christ himself calleth them Fools and slow of heart to believe what the Prophets had foretold Luke 24.25 Their Fear had sullied the evidence that they could not see it the Text sayth they forsook him and fled Matth. 26.56 And the reason of this is plain For though Faith be an act of the Understanding yet it dependeth upon the Will and men are incredulous nor for want of those means which may raise a faith but for want of will to follow that light which leadeth unto it they do not believe because they will not and so bear themselves strongly upon opinion preconceived beyond the strength of all evidence whatsoever When our affections and lusts are high and stand out against it the evidence is put by and forgot and the object which calls for our eye and faith begins to disappear and vanish and at last is nothing Quot voluntates tot fides saith Hilary So many Wills so many Creeds For there is no man that believeth more than he will To make this good we may appeal to men of the slendrest observation and least experience we may appeal to our very eye which cannot but see those uncertain and uneven motions in which men are carried on in the course of their life For what else is that that turneth us about like the hand of a Dial from one point to another from one perswasion to a contrary How cometh it to pass that I now embrace what anon I tremble at What is the reason that our Belief shifteth so many scenes and presenteth it self in so many several shapes now in the indifferency of a Laodicean anon in the violence of a Zealot now in the gaudiness of Superstition anon in the proud and scornful slovenry of factious Profaneness that many make so painful a peregrination through so many modes and forms of Religion and at last end in Atheists What reason is there There can be none but this the prevalency and victory of our Sensitive part over our Reason and the mutability yea and stubbornness of our Will which cleaveth to that which it will soon forsake but is strongly set against the Truth which bringeth with it the fairest evidence but not so pleasing to the sense This is it which maketh so many impressions in the mind Self-love and the Love of the world these frame our Creeds these plant and build these root and pull down build up a faith and then beat it to the ground and then set up another in its place James 1.8 2 Tim. 2 8 A double-minded man saith S. James is unstable in all his wayes Remember saith S. Paul that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised up from the dead according to my Gospel That is a sure foundation for our faith to build on There we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fair and certain pledges of faith as it were a commentary upon EGO VIVO or as so many beams of light to make it open and manifest to every eye which give up so fair an evidence that the malice of the Jew cannot avoid it Matth. 28.13 Let them say His Disciples stole him away whilest their stout watchmen slept What stole him away and whilest they slept It is a dream and yet it is not a dream it is a studied lye and doth so little shake that it confirmeth our faith so transparent that through it we may behold more clearly the face of Truth which never shineth brighter than when a lye is drawn before it to vail and shadow it Matth. 28.6 He is not here he is risen if an Angel had not spoken it yet the Earthquake the Clothes the Clothes so diligently wrapt up the Grave it self did speak it And where such strange impossibilities are brought in to colour and promote a lye they help to confute it Id negant quod ostendunt They deny what they affirm and Malice it self is made an argument for the truth 1 Cor. 15.5 6. For it we have a better verdict given by Cephas and the twelve yea we have a cloud of witnesses above five hundred brethren at once who would not make themselves the fathers of a lye to propogate that Gospel which either maketh our yea yea and nay nay or damneth us Nor did they publish it to raise themselves in wealth and honour For it teacheth them to contemn these matters maketh Poverty a beatitude and sheweth them a sword and persecution which they were sure to meet with and did afterwards in the prosecution of their office and publication of that faith Nor could they take any delight in such a lye as would gather so many clouds over their heads which would at last dissolve in that bitterness that would make life it self a punishment and at last take it away And how could they hope that men would ever believe that which themselves knew to be a lye These witnesses then are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 many and beyond exception
and for the advantage of those things which are necessary that are already under a higher and more binding law than any Potentate or Monarch of the earth can make The acts I say of Charity are manifest But those of Christian Prudence are not particularly designed Prudentia respicit ad singularia because that eye is given us to view and consider particular occurrences and circumstances and it dependeth upon those things which are without us whereas Charity is an act of the will And here if we would be our selves or rather if we would not be our selves but be free from by-respects and unwarrantable ends if we would devest our selves of all hopes or fears of those things which may either shake or raise our estates we could not be to seek For how easy is it to a disingaged and willing mind to apply a general precept to particular actions especially if Charity fill our hearts which is the bond of perfection Col. 3.14 Rom. 13.10 and the end and complement of the Law and indeed our spiritual wisdome In a word in these cases when we go to consult with our Reason we cannot erre if we leave not Charity behind us Or if we should erre our Charity would have such an influence upon our errour that it should trouble none but our selves 1 Cor. 13.7 For Charity beareth all things believeth all things hopeth all things endureth all things This is the extent of the Spirit 's Lesson And if in other truths more subtil than necessary we are to seek it mattereth not for we need not seek them It is no sin not to know that which I cannot know to be no wiser than God hath made me And what need our curiosity rove abroad when that which is all and alone concerneth us lieth in so narrow a compass In absoluto facili aeternitas saith Hilary The way to heaven may seem rough and troublesome but it is an easy way easy to find out though not so easy at our first onset to walk in and yet to those that tread and trace it often as delightful as Paradise it self See God hath shut up Eternity within the compass of two words Believe and Repent which is a full and just commentary on the Spirit 's Lesson the sum of all that he taught Lay your foundation right and then build upon it Because God loved you in Christ do you love him in Christ Love him and keep his commandments than which no other way could have been found out to draw you neer unto God Believe and Repent this is all Oh wicked abomination whence art thou come to cover the earth with deceit What malice what defiance what contention what gall and bitterness amongst Christians yet this is all Believe and Repent the Pen the Tongue the Sword these are the weapons of our warfare What ink what blood hath been spilt in the cause of Religion How many innocents defamed how many Saints anathematized how many millions cut down with the sword yet this is all Believe and Repent We hear the noyse of the whip and the ratling of the wheels and the prancing of the horses The horseman lifteth up his bright sword and his glittering spear Nah. 3.2 3. Every part of Christendome almost is a stage of war and the pretense is written in their banners you may see it waving in the air FOR GOD AND RELIGION yet this is all Believe and Repent Who would once think the Pillars of the earth should be thus shaken that the world should be turned into a worse chaos than that out of which it was made that there should be such wars and fightings amongst Christians for that which is shut up and brought unto us in these two words Believe and Repent For all the truth which is necessary and will be sufficient to lift us to our end and raise us to happiness can make no larger a circumferance than this This is the Law and the Prophets or rather this is the Gospel of Christ this is the whole will of God In this is knowledge justification redemption and holiness This is the Spirit 's Lesson and all other lessons are no lessons not worth the learning further than they help and improve us in this In a word this is all in all and within this narrow compass we may walk out our span of time and by the conduct of the same Spirit in the end of it attain to that perfection and glory which shall never have an end And so from the Lesson and Extent of it we pass to the Manner and Method of the Spirit 's Teaching It is not Raptus a forcible and violent drawing but Ductus a gentle Leading and Guiding The word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he shall lead Which implyeth a preparedness and willingness to be led And the Spirit that leadeth us teacheth us also to follow him not to resist him that he may lead us Acts 7.51 Eph. 4.30 1 Thes 5.19 2 Tim. 1.6 not to grieve him by our backwardness that he may fill us with joy not to quench him that he may enlighten us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to stir up his gifts that they dye not in us Now this promise was directly and primarily made to the Apostles whose Commission being extraordinary and their Diocess as large as the whole world they needed the Spirits guidance in a more high and eminent manner gifts of Tongues and diversities of graces which might fit them for so great a work that as their care so their power might be as universal as the world And yet to them was the Spirit given in measure and where measure is there are degrees and they were led by degrees not straight to all truth but by steps and approaches S. Peter himself was not wrapt up as his pretended Successor into the chair of Truth to determine all at once For when Pentecost was now past he goeth to Caesarea Acts 10.11 34. and there learneth more then he had done at Jerusalem seeth that in the Sheet which was let down to the earth which he heard not from the Tongues and of a truth now perceived what he did not before that God was no accepter of persons that now the partition-wall was broken down that Jew and Gentile were both alike and the Church which was formerly shut up in Judea was now become Catholick a Body which every one that would might be a member of Besides though the Apostles were extraordinarily and miraculously inspired yet we cannot say that they used no means at all to bring down the blessed Spirit For it is plain they did wait for his coming they prayed for the truth and laboured for the truth they conferred one with another met together in counsel deliberated before they did determin Nor could they imagin they had the Spirit in a string and could command him as they please and make him follow them whithersoever they would And then between us and the Apostles there
drop a penny We wast away and sicken and make our will and seal it and doubt not but the Spirit will do his office and seal our redemption At last the rich man dyeth and is buried and some hireling will tell you The Angels have carried his soul into heaven A strange conceit Luke 16. and if true of force to pluck Lazarus out of Abrahams bosome and to bring back Dives through the gulf and place him in his room But if this be not true may it never be true Onely let us not deceive our selves but search and try our hearts and root out all such vain and groundless and pernicious imaginations which may be raised up in time of prosperity and multiply like flyes in the Sun Let us not seek our peace in those false fictitious spurious deceitful Goods but in the true and full and filling Good the Good here in the Text. And because God hath fitted and proportioned it to us let us fit and apply our selves unto it And since he hath built us up after his own Image let us adorn and beautifie it with Justice and Mercy and Humility and not blur and deface it with the craft of a Fox the lust of a Goat and the rage of a Lion For what should the mark of the Beast do upon the Image of God Again being fitted to us and to all sorts and conditions of men Let young men and maids Psal 148.12 13. old men and children Scribes and Ideots noble and ignoble Priest and people cleave and adhear to it and so praise and magnifie the name of the Lord Sic laudant Angeli for so the Angels and Arch-angels praise him And thirdly being lovely and amiable let us make it our choice and espouse our wills to it love and embrace it not kiss and wound it approve and condemn it worship it in our hearts and persecute it in our brethren And since it is a filling and satisfying good here let us let down our pitchers Isa 12.3 and draw waters out of this well of salvatien even those waters which will sweeten our miseries and give a pleasant tast to Bitterness it self To conclude Behold here is the object that which is Good fair and beautiful to the eye Jer. 5.1 Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see if you can find a MAN and he is the spectatour and cannot but see it But what went you out into the wilderness to see Matth. 11 7-9 saith our Saviour Why the eye is never satisfied Pro. 27.20 and all would go out to see Some would see soft Raiment Eccl. 1.8 4.8 and that you may see on every back Some gaze upon Beauty and that is a burning-glass to set the Soul on fire Others love to see the redness of the Wine Prov. 23.31 20.1 Look not on it saith Solomon It is a mocker Some would behold a shew of Pomp and Glory and we see though Justice can never fail but hath the best even when she is worsted yet Injustice hath had more triumphs then she When Julius Caesar triumphed over his countrey and when Pompey rid in with the spoils of Asia the ceremony and the pomp and the glory was the same But the eye with which we behold these spectacles is not fit for this object We have another eye a spiritual eye we call it the eye of our Reason and we call it the eye of our Faith This many times is but as an eye of glass for shew but no use at all and serveth to hide a deformity but not to see with But if it be a quick and living eye then here is a fit object for it worth the looking on in which we may see all other things in a fairer dress in a celestial form in the beauty of Holiness being made useful and subservient to it like that Speculum Trinitatis that feigned Glass in which they tell us he that looketh seeth all things If wee see not this object then are we blind 2 Pet. 1.9 or if not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 purblind not seeing afar off those things which are laid up in heaven for those who look upon this Good and love it and then I am unwilling to say what we are but certainly we are but infidels And indeed there is something of Infidelity in all our aversions and turning away from this Good For what is the reason that covetous men make Riches an idol and sacrifice to their own net but want of faith and their distrust in God For when God doth not answer their desires 1 Sam. 28. Adv. Judaeos c. 1. Praeesset eis bubulum caput c. they run with Saul to the Devil at Endor or with the Israelites in a pet chuse to themselves bubulum caput as Tertullian expresseth it a Calves head to be their leader I say there is a degree of Infidelity in all these aversions from this Good All that can be said is but what many say within themselves after they have consulted with flesh and blood that this Good is not shewn so clearly nor made so plain as it is said to be which is indeed to remove thei◠own prop and pillar to demollish their own Idol and to drive Faith quite out of the world Believe they do in God yet will not trust him And they are perswaded of the truth of things not seen yet will leave the pursuit of them to follow vanity because they are not seen He hath shewed thee O man what is good and wilt thou not believe him Heb. 11.1 Faith is the substance of things not seen and though they be not seen yet they are evident the Means evident and the End as evident as the Means in our sad and sober thoughts when we talk like speculative men as evident as what is open to the eye But such an evidence we have which a Covetous man would soon lay hold on for a title to a fair inheritance and the Ambitious for an assignment of some great place For if such a record had been transmitted to posterity if the Scripture which conveyeth this Good had entailed some rich Manour or Lordship upon them it should have then found an easie belief and been Gospel a sure word of prophecy unquestionable undoubtable like the decrees of the Medes and Persians which must stand fast for ever and cannot be altered For too many there be who had rather have their names in a good leaf then in the book of life And this is the reason why we are so ignorant of that which is Good indeed and so great Clerks in that which is called good but by the worst why we are so dull and indocil in apprehending that wisdome which is from above and so wise and witty to our own damnation why we do but darkly see this Good which is so plainly shewn unto us What shall we say then Nay what saith the
Greeks call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lib. 11. Noct. Attic. c. 16. De Tranq c. 12. which Gellius confesseth he cannot render no not obscurely in many words Seneca inquietam inertiam an unquiet and troublesome sloth by which we run up and down and never abide at one stay but like men which run in hast to quench a fire shoulder every one we meet and tumble down our selves and others in the way Sticho act 1. sc 3. and so fall together Curiosus nemo est quin sit malevolus saith he in Plautus Curiosity is the breath of Malice and is mischievous And Mischief provoketh Wrath and Injustice and Mischief on the one side and Impatience and Wrath on the other meet and strive and struggle together and in the contention either one or both are lost And therefore Plato telleth us De Repub c 4 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to meddle with our own matters and not to busie our selves in other mens is that which we call Justice for by this we leave to every man that which is his untoucht and preserve to our selves that which is ours that is we are just to others and just to our selves we do not trouble and disadvantage other men in their station and defend our own But when we fly out and pass beyond our bounds we are not what we should be but carry about with us a world of iniquity Our thoughts are let loose full of desire and are doubled upon us full of anxiety and when we gain most we are the greatest losers We are injurious false deceitful we are oppressours thieves murderers usurpers we are all that in our selves which we condemn in others For this is the seminary of all those evils which are sent forth as so many emissaries to break the peace of Church and Common-wealth And therefore not onely Religion but Reason also not onely Christianity but even Nature it self hath copsed and bound us in from flying out and hath designed to every man his proper business that he may not stray nor wander abroad First Christianity is the greatest peace-maker and keepeth every man to his own office if Ministery to wait on his Ministery if Teaching Rom. 12.7 to teach if Trading to follow his Trade if Government to rule with diligence if Service to be obedient with singleness of heart Eph. 6.5 Every man hath his gift and every man hath his measure and proportion And as it was in the gathering of Manna he that hath much hath nothing over Exod. 16.18 and he that hath little hath no lack Every mans place is the best for there is no place either in Church or Common-wealth which is not honourable and a great honour it is to serve God in any place 1 Cor. 15.41 One star differeth from another star in glory but in its proper sphere every Star shineth but out of it it is either a Mass or lump or nothing It is true indeed Gal. 3.28 in Christ Jesus there is neither high nor low neither rich nor poor Psal 49.2 no difference between the Noble and the Peasant Exod. 11.5 between him that grindeth at the mill and him that sitteth on the throne because his spiritual graces are communicated non homini sed humano generi not to this man or that to this calling or that but to as many as will receive them to all the world And every man that is Christs servant is a Peer a Priest and a King And when he shall come to judge both the quick and the dead he will not pardon this man because he was a King nor condemn that man because he was a begger For neither was Dives put in hell because he was rich nor Lazarus carried into Abraham's bosome because he was poor neither was Nero lost because he was an Emperour nor Paul saved because he was a tent-maker But yet for all this he hath made up his Church and formed Common-wealths not of Angels but of Men who live in the world and so under order and government and hath assigned every man his place and calling which every man would keep and make good every man would be quiet and in peace the Church would be as Heaven it self all glory and all harmony and the Common-wealth would be a body compact within it self never fly in pieces but last for ever and flourish in it self being subject to no injury but that of Time or a greater and overpowerful forrein force For that conceit of a designed Period and a fatality hanging over every body Politique which at last sinketh it down and burieth it in that ruine upon which another is raised is generally believed in the world but upon no convincing evidence having neither Reason nor Revelation to raise it up to the credit of a positive truth For That such a thing hath been done is no good Argument that it shall ever be so Though God hath foretold the period and end of this or that Monarchy yet the prophesie doth not reach unto all And he himself hath given us rules and precepts to be a sense and hedge about every Common-wealth which if we did not pluck it up our selves might secure and carry along the course of things even to their end that is to the end of the world But this we talk of as we do of many other things talk so long till we believe it and rest on our bare guess and conjecture as on a Demonstration But the truth is we are our own fate and destiny we draw out our thread and cut it We start out of our places and divide our selves from one another and then indeed and not till then Fate and Necessity lye heavy upon a Kingdome and it cannot stand Christianity bindeth us to our own business And till we break loose till some one or other step out of his place from it there is peace we are safe in our lesser vessels and the ship of the Common-wealth rideth on with that smoothness and evenness which it hath from the consistencie of its parts in their own place Gal. 3 28. For though all are one in Christ Jesus yet we cannot but see that there is a main difference between the inward qualification of his members and the outward administration and government of his Church In the Kingdomes of the world and so in the Church visible every man is not fit for every place Some must teach some govern some learn and obey some put their hand to the plough some to this trade some to that onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle speaketh Polit l. 6 c. 5. those who are of more then ordinary wit and ability must bear office in Church or Commonwealth One is noble another is ignoble one is learned another is ignorant one is for the spade another for the sword one for the flail or sheephook another for the scepter Plin. Epist. And such a disproportion is necessary amongst men
was to put all to the sword and the event was he spared one too many 2 Sam. 1. for one of them was his executioner God biddeth us destroy the whole body of sin Rom. 6.6 12. to leave no sin reigning in our mortal bodies and if we favour and spare but one that one if we turn not from it will be strong enough to turn us to destruction Again it is Obedience onely that commendeth us to God and that as exact and perfect as the equity of the Gospel requireth and so every degree of sin is rebellion God requireth totam voluntatem the whole will for indeed where it is not whole it is not at all it is not a will and integram poenitentiam a solid entire universal conversion True obedience saith Luther non transit in genus deliberativum doth not demur and deliberate I may add non transit in genus judiciale It doth not take upon it self to determine which commandment is to be kept and which may be omitted what is to be done and what to be left undone For as our Faith is imperfect if it be not equal to the truth revealed so is our Obedience imperfect when it is not equal to the command and both are unavailable because in the one we stick at some part of the truth revealed and in the other come short of the command and so in the one we distrust God in the other we oppose him What is a Sigh if my Murmuring drown it What is my Devotion if my Impatience chill it What is my Liberality if my Uncleanness defile it What are my Prayers if my partial Obedience turn them into sin What is a morsel of bread to one poor man when my Oppression hath eaten up a thousand What is my Faith if my Malice make me worse then an Infidel The voice of Scripture the language of Obedience is to keep all the commandments the language of Repentance to depart from all iniquity All the Virtues in the world cannot wash off the guilt of one unrepented sin Mic. 6.7 Shall I give my first born for my transgression saith the Prophet the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul Shall I bring the merits of one Saint the supererogations of another and add to these the treasury of the Church Shall I bring my Almes my Devotion my Tears All these will vanish at the guilt of one sin and melt before it as wax before the Sun For every sin is as Seneca speaketh of Alexander's in killing Callisthenes De Benef. crimen aeternum an everlasting sin which no virtue of our own but a full complete Repentance can redeem As oft as it shall be said that Alexander slew so many thousand Persians it will be replyed he did so but withal he slew Callisthenes He slew Darius it is true and Callisthenes too He wan all as far as the very Ocean it is true but he killed Callisthenes And as oft as we shall fill our minds and flatter our selves with the forbearance of these or those sins our Conscience will check and take us up and tell us But we have continued in this or that beloved sin And none of all our performances shall make so much to our comfort as one unrepented sin shall to our reproch And now because in common esteem One is no number and we scarce count him guilty of sin who hath but one fault let us well weigh the danger of any one sin be it Fornication Theft Covetousness or whatsoever is called sin and though perhaps we may dread it the less because it is but one yet we shall find good reason to turn from it because it is sin And 1. Every particular sin is of a monstrous aspect being committed not onely against the Law written but against the Law of Nature which did then characterize the soul when the soul did first inform the body For though we call those horrid sins unnatural which S. Paul speaketh against Rom. 1. yet in true estimation every sin is so being against our very Reason which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very first law written in our hearts Or. 34. saith Nazianzene Sin is an unreasonable thing nor can it defend it self by discourse or argument If heaven were to be bought with sin it were no purchase for by every evil work I forfeit not onely my Christianity but my Manhood I am robbed of my chiefest jewel and I my self am the thief Who would buy eternity with sin who would buy immortality upon such loathsome terms If Christ should have promised heaven upon condition of a wicked life who would have believed there had been either Christ or heaven And therefore it is laid as an imputation upon Man Solum hoc animal naturae fines transgreditur No Creature breaketh the bounds and limits which Nature hath set but Man And there is much of truth in it Man when he sinneth is more unbounded and irregular then a Beast For a Beast followeth the conduct of his natural appetite but Man leaveth his Reason behind which should be more powerful and is as natural to him as his Sense Man Psal 49.20 saith the Prophet David that understandeth not is like to the beasts that perish And Man that is like to a beast is worse then a Beast No Fox to Herode Luke 13.32 no Goat to the Wanton no Tiger to the Murderer No Wolf to the Oppressour no Horseleach to the Covetous For Beasts follow that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 instinct of nature by which they are carried to the object but Man maketh Reason which should come in to rescue him from sin an instrument of evil so that his Reason which was made as a help as his God on earth serveth onely to make him more unreasonable Consider then though it be but one sin yet so far it maketh thee like unto a Beast nay worse then any though it be but one yet it hath a monstrous aspect and then turn from it 2. Though it be but one yet it is very fruitful and may beget another nay multiply it self into a numerous issue into as many sins as there be hairs of thy head It is truly said Omne verum omni vero consonat There is a kind of agreement and harmony in truths And the devout Schoolman telleth us that the whole Scripture is but one copulative proposition because the precepts therein contained are many and yet but one many in regard of the diversity of those works that perfect them yet but one in respect of that root of charity which beginneth them So peccatum est multiplex unum There is a kind of dependency between sins and a growth in wickedness one drawing and deriving poyson from another 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Epiphanius speaketh of Heresies Haeres Basilid as the Asp doth from the Viper which being set in opposition to any particular virtue creepeth on and multiplieth and gathereth strength to the endangering of
faction What press on to make thy self better and make thy self worse go up to the Temple to pray and profane it What go to Church and there learn to pull it down Why Oh why will ye thus die O house of Israel Oh then let us look about us with a thousand eyes let us be wise and consider what we are and where we are that we are a House and so ought every man to fill and make good his place and mutually support each other that we are a Family and must be active in those offices which are proper to us and so with united forces keep Death from entring in that we are the Israel of God his chosen people chosen therefore that we may not cast away our selves 1 Tim. 3.15 that we are his Church which is the pillar and ground of truth a pillar to lean on that we fall not and holding out and urging the truth which is able to save us that we may not die We have God's Word to quicken us his Sacraments to strengthen and confirm us his Grace to prevent and follow us We have many helps and huge advantages And if we look up upon them and lay hold on them if we hearken to his Word resist not his Grace neither idolize nor profane his Sacraments but receive them with reverence as they were instituted in love if we hear the Church if we hear one another if we confirm one another Rom. 6.9 Gal. 7.16 if we watch over our selves and one another Death shall have can have no more dominion over us we shall not we cannot die at all but as many as thus walk in the common light of the house of Israel peace shall be upon them and mercy and upon the Israel of God And now we must draw towards a conclusion and we must conclude and shut up all in nobis ipsis in our selves If we die it is quia volumus because we will die For look above us and there is God the living God the God of life saying to us Live Look before us and there is Death breathing terrour to drive us from it shewing us his dart that we may hold up our buckler Look about us and there are armouries of weapons treasuries of wisdome shops of physick balm and ointments helps and advantages pillars and supporters to uphold us that we may stand and not fall into the pit which openeth its mouth but will shut it again if we flie from it which is not cannot be is nothing if we do not dig it our selves The Church exhorteth instructeth correcteth God calleth inviteth expostulateth Death it self threatneth us that we may not come near Thus are we compassed about auxiliorum nube with a cloud of helps and advantages The Church is loud Death is terrible God's Nolo is loud I will not the death of a sinner Ezek. 33.11 and confirmed with an oath As he liveth He would not have us die And it is plain enough in his lightning and in his thunder in his expostulations and wishes in his anger in his grief in his spreading out his hands in his administration of all means sufficient to protect and guard us from it And it excludeth all Stoical Fate all necessity of sinning or dying There is nothing above us nothing before us nothing about us which can necessitate or bind us over to Death so that if we die it is in our volo in our Will we die for no other reason but that which is not reason Quia volumus Because we will die We have now brought you to the very cell and den of Death where this monster was framed and fashioned where it was first conceived brought forth and nursed up I have discovered to you the original and beginnings of Sin whose natural issue is Death and shut it up in one word the Will That which hath so troubled and amused men in all the ages of the Church to find out that which some have sought in heaven in the bosome of God as if his Providence had a hand in it and others have raked hell and made the Devil the authour of who is but a perswader and a soliciter to promote it that which others have tied to the chain of Destiny whose links are filed by the phansie alone and made up of air and so not strong enough to bind men much less the Gods themselves as it is said that which many have busied themselves in a painful and unnecessary search to find out openiâ—g the windows of Heaven to find it there running to and fro about the Universe to find it there and searching Hell it self to discover it we may discover in our own breasts in our own heart The Will is the womb that conceiveth this monster this viper which eateth through it and destroyeth the mother in the birth For that which is the beginning of action is the beginning of Sin and that which is the beginning of Sin is the cause of Death In homine quicquid est sibi proficit saith Hilary In Psal 118 There is nothing in Man nothing in the world which he may not make use of to avoid and prevent Death And in homine quicquid est sibi nocet There is nothing in Man nothing in the world which he may not make an occasion and instrument of sin That which hurteth him may help him That which circumspection and diligence may make an antidote neglect and carelesness may turn into poyson 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Basil As Goodness so Sin is the work of our Will not of Necessity If they were wrought in us against our will there could be neither good nor evil I call heaven and earth to witness Deut. 30.19 said GOD by his servant Moses I have set before you life and death blessing and cursing And what is it to set it before them but to put it to themselves to put it into their own hands to put it to their choice Chuse then which you will The Devil may tempt the Law occasion sin Rom. 7.11 the Flesh may be weak Temptations may shew themselves but not any of these not all of these can bring in a necessity of dying For the Question or Expostulation doth not run thus Why are you under a Law Why are you weak or Why are you dead for reasons may be given for all these and the Justice and Wisdome of God will stand up to defend them But the Question is Why will ye die for which there can be no other reason given but our Will And here we must make a stand and take our rise from this one word this one syllable our Will For upon no larger foundation then this we either build our selves up into a temple of the Lord or into that tower of Babel and Confusion which God will destroy We see here all is laid upon the Will But such is our folly and madness so full of contradictions is a wilfull sinner Wisd 1.16 that
his Topick and hopeth it will melt him he beggeth of into compassion and yet he hath not power to unfold his hands to work that he may need no relief Grace soundeth in every ear and every ear is delighted with it and it is to them as the sound of a consecrated Bell is to the superstitious and they conceive it hath power to drive the Devil out of their coast whilst they not fall but run into those temptations which they might have overcome by that Grace they talkt of What speak we of these Even they who have a great name for learning and are of the first rank and file have not brought it forth â—o the Sun and to the people in that simplicity and nakedness that upon the first sight they may say This is it Sometimes it is an infused Habit sometimes it is a Motion or Operation sometimes they know not how to distinguish it from Faith and Charity It is one and the same yet it is manifold It exciteth and stirreth us up it worketh in us and it worketh with us it preventeth and followeth us And thus they handle Grace as the Philosophers do the Soul they tell us what wonders it worketh but not its essence they tell us what it doth but not plainly what it is But let us take it in its most plain and vulgar sense for that special and supernatural assistance which promoteth and upholdeth us in that course and those actions which carry us on to a supernatural end but not shut out that Grace of God by Christ Jesus by which we are justified which in Scripture is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Grace and favour of God and in most places is opposed to the Works of the Law nor those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those gifts and graces as Quickness of wit Depth of understanding and the like nor Gods Mercies by which we are so often intreated nor his promises which do even woo and allure us nor any beams of the glory of that Gospel which are all agents and instruments in working us out a crown in bringing us to that end for which we were made and designed And he that shall look back upon these cannot conceive that God will shorten his hand and be deficient and wanting to us in that help and assistance which is fit and necessary for us in this our race that he will speak to us by his Son speak to us by his blood speak to us by his mercies speak to us from heaven and then leave us as the Ostrich doth her young ones in the sand open to injuries and temptations naked and without help to defend us against that violence which may tread us to death This certainly cannot consist with his Justice and his Goodness Rom. 8.32 who having given us Christ will with him give us all things for how should it be otherwise saith S. Paul who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not Jam. 1.5 saith S. James To pretend a want of Grace and assistance from God what is it but to cast all our imperfections upon him as well as upon Adam as if we sinned and were defective in our duty not through our own negligence and corrupt and perverse wills but because God refused to give us strength to do it gave us a Law and left us in fetters bid us go and meet him in our obedience 2 Sam. 19.26 when we were as lame as Mephibosheth and had no servant to help us as if the heavens were as brass and denied their influence and God did on purpose hide himself and withdraw his grace that we might fall from him and perish And therefore Hilary passeth this heavy censure upon it Impiae est voluntatis It is the sign of a wicked heart and one quite destitute of those graces and riches which are the proper inheritance of believing Christians to pretend they therefore want them because they were not given them of God A dangerous errour it is And we have reason to fear it hath sunk many a soul to that supine carelessness and deadness from whence they could never rise again For this is one of the wiles of our enemy to make use not onely of the flying and fading vanities of this world but even of the best graces of God to file and hammer them and make them snares and so work temptations out of that which should strengthen us against them Faith is suborned to keep out Charity the spirit of Truth is named to lead us into errour and the power of Gods Grace hath lost its authority and energy by our unsavoury and fruitless panegyricks We hear the sound and name of it we bless and applaud it but the power of it is lost not visible in any motion in any action in any progress we make in those wayes in which alone Grace will assist us It floateth on the tongue but never moveth either heart or hand Non est bonae solidae fidei omnia ad voluntatem Dei referre ut non intelligamus aliquid esse in nobis ipsis Tertull Exhort ad castitatem For do we not lie still in our graves expecting till this trump will sound Do we not cripple our selves in hope of a miracle Do we not settle upon our lees and say God can draw us out wallow in our blood because he can wash us as white as snow Do we not love our sickness because we have so skilful a Physician and since God can do what he will do what we please This is a great evil under the Sun and one principal cause of all that evil that is upon the earth It maketh us stand still and look on and delight in it and leave it to God alone and his power to remove it as if it concerned us not at all and it were too daring an attempt for us mortals the sons of Adam to purge and clense that Augean stable which we our selves have filled with dung as if Gods Wisdom and Justice did not move at all and his Mercy and Power were alone busie in the work of our salvation Busie to save the adulterer 1 Cor. 6.15 for though he be the member of an harlot yet when God will he shall be made a member of Christ to save the seditious for though he now breath nothing but hail-stones and coals of fire yet a time will come where he shall be made peaceable whether he will or no to save them who resolve to go on in their sin for God can check them when he please and bring them back to obedience and holiness in a word 2 Pet. 2.3 to save them whose damnation sleepeth not I may say with the Father Vtinam mentirer Would to God in this I were a lier But we have too much probability to induce us to believe it as a truth that they who are so ready to publish the free and irresistible power of God's Grace and call it his honour dishonour him more
by them who will receive her nor dwell with those persons which contemn her nor save those who will destroy themselves To conclude this He is most unworthy to receive Grace who in the least degree detracteth from the power of it And he is as unworthy who magnifieth and rejecteth it and maketh his life an argument against his doctrine saith Grace cannot be resisted and resisteth it every day He that denieth the power of God's Grace is scarse a Christian And he is the worst of Christians who will not gird up his loins and work out his salvation but loitreth and standeth idle all the day long shadoweth and pleaseth himself under the expectation of what God will do and so turneth his grace into wantonness Let us not abuse the Grace of God and then we cannot magnifie it enough But he that will not set his hand to work upon a phansie that he wanteth Grace he that vvill not hearken after Grace though she knock and knock again as Fortune vvas said to have done at Galba's gate till she be vveary hath despised the Grace of God and cannot plead the vvant of that for any excuse vvhich he might have had but put it off nay vvhich he had but so used it as if it had been no Grace at all They that have Grace offered and repel it they that have antidotes against Death and vvill not use them can never ansvver the expostulation Why will ye die And certainly he that is so liberal of his Grace hath given us knovvledge enough to see the danger of those vvayes vvhich lead to Death And therefore in the next place Ignorance of our vvayes doth not minuere voluntarium make our sin less vvilful but rather aggrandize it For first vve may if vve vvill knovv every duty that tendeth to life and every sin that bringeth forth death 2 Cor. 2.11 We may know the Devils enterprises saith S. Paul And the ignorance of this findeth no excuse when we have power and faculty light and understanding When the Gospel shineth brightly upon us to dispell those mists which may be placed between the Truth and us Sub scientiae facultate nescire repudiatae magìs quà m non compertae veritatis est reatus Hil. in Psal 118. then if we walk in darkness and in the shadow of death we shall be found guilty not so much of not finding out the truth as of refusing it as Hilary speaketh of a strange contempt in not attaining that which is so easily atchieved and which is so necessary for our preservation I know every man hath not the same quickness of apprehension nor can every man make a Divine and it were to be wisht every man would know it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is not for him that thresheth out the corn to resolve controversies or State questions But S. Peter requireth that every man should be able to give an answer 1 Pet. 3.15 a reason of his faith And if he can do that he knoweth the will of God and is well armed and prepared against death and may cope with him and destroy him if he will And this is no perplext nor intricate study but fitted and proportioned to the meanest capacity He that cannot be a Seraphical Divine may be a Christian He that cannot be a Rabbi may be an honest man And if men were as diligent in the pursuit of the truth as they are in managing their own temporal affairs if men would try as many conclusions for knowledge as they do for wealth and were as ambitious to be good as they are to be rich and great if they were as much afraid of Gods wrath as they are of poverty and the frown of a mortal this pretense of want of knowledge would be soon removed and quite taken out of the way Tit. 2.11 Acts 17.30 For now the Grace of God hath appeared unto all men and commanded all men every where to repent and turn from their evil wayes What apologie can the Oppressour have when Wisdome it self hath sounded in his ears and told him Lev. 19.18 Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self for even flesh and bloud would soon conclude that no man will oppress himself What can the Revenger plead after the thunder Rom. 12.19 Vengeance is mine What can the Covetous pretend when he heareth Go sell all and give to the poor What can the Seditious say Matth. 19.21 when he is plainly told He that resisteth shall receive damnation Rom. 13.2 Can any man miss his way where there is so much light to direct him when he brought a great part of his lesson along with him into the world which he may run and read and understand How can he there erre dangerously where the Truth is fastned to a pillar where there is such a Mercury to shew him his way And therefore in the second place if we be ignorant it is because we will be ignorant If we could open a window into the breasts of men we should soon perceive a hot contention between their Knowledge and their Lusts strugling together like the twins in Rebekah's womb till at last their Lust supplanteth their Knowledge and gaineth the preeminence Nolunt intelligere nè cogantur facere saith Augustine They will not understand their duty lest that many draw upon them an obligation to do it nor will they see their errour because they have no mind to forsake it For their Knowledge pointeth towards life but not to be attained to but by sweat and blood which their Lust loatheth and trembleth at And therefore this knowledge is too wonderful for them Psal 139.6 nay it is as the gall of bitterness unto them As Nero's mother would not suffer him to study Philosophy quia imparaturo contraria Suet. Nerone c. 25. because it prescribeth many moral virtues as Sincerity Modesty and Frugality which sort not well with the Crown and must needs fall cross with those actions which Politie and Necessity many times ingage the Monarchs of the earth so do these look upon the Truth as a thing contrary to them as checking their Pride bridling their Malice bounding their Ambition chiding their Injustice threatning their Tyranny and so they study to unlearn suppress and silence it and will not hear it speak to them any more but set up a Lie first the childe then the parasite of their Lusts and enthrone it in its place to reign over them and guide them in all their waies I remember Bernard in one of his Sermons upon the Canticles telleth us that he observed many cast down and very sad and dejected upon the knowledge of the Truth not so much for that it did shew them the danger they were in and withal an open and effectual door to escape but that it choaked the passages and stopped up the way to their old asylum and sanctuary of Ignorance For Truth is not onely a light but a fire to scorch and burn
yet the profit of them is in a manner quite lost and they are of little or no use to the mere natural man who hath not yet ventured at this mart For that is of small use which bringeth us not to the main end It is a wonder to observe what gifts of Wisdom Temperance moral and natural Conscience do not onely appear in the books but also appeared in the lives of many heathen men utterly void of the knowledge of this Truth Yet what advantage were those things to them since without the Truth all the good that remaineth in the natural man can never help him one foot toward the atteinment of eternal happiness Take we the wisest and honestest Heathen that ever was a Socrates or an Epictetus a Fabricius or a Cato let him have all the graces that are this Truth onely excepted let him not onely be morally vertuous but also endure all disgrace and torment for vertue 's sake and not onely Christianity but even moral goodness hath sometimes been persecuted let him be a Regulus and undergo what so many Christians refuse to do onely because he dareth not break his oath let us I say set before our selves a man in whom all moral excellencies concur and then judge what a purchase that of Truth is For what shall all those endowments profit him when having put off his body of flesh he shall find one and the same place provided for him that is for the wickedest wretch that ever lived Then what is the Christians Hearing and Fasting and Praying if this Truth do not seal and ratifie them Shall I say Not so good as the virtues of the Heathen Nay far worse If their virtues were splendida peccata shining and glorious sins as S. Augustine censureth them what then is our ceremonious hypocrisy Certainly a sin as great as theirs but not so glorious the foul face of deceit and rapine shewing it self through all the paint Nor will it stand us in so much stead as their graces do them which serve to lighten the weight of their punishment and to diminish the number of their stripes For sure there is not the same degree of torment inflicted upon Regulus and Epictetus that is upon Nero and Julian But our abuse of the duties which are servants unto Truth our form of godliness working with the power of iniquity maketh abomination it self more abominable and hell hotter then it otherwise would be It is Truth which casteth a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a loveliness both on natutal graces and outward performances and so doth attract and draw the favour of God unto them These are as it were the matter and body of a Christian a thing of it self dead without life the soul that quickneth this body is the Truth This maketh Hearing a religious duty sanctifieth a Fast presenteth Almes as a sacrifice giveth beauty and lustre to every virtue All the virtues which commend us to God are of the same kindred and of near relation to this Truth but without this they shall never come to have any part of the vision of God as Joseph said unto his brethren Ye shall not see my face Gen. 43.5 except your brother be with you This is the high prerogative of Truth That it commendeth all our endeavours and beautifieth all our actions That it is the pillar of our Hope the life of our Faith and the soul and spirit of our Charity For what is a failing Hope a dead Faith a cold Charity good for What advantage is there in a feigned Temperance a forced Sorrow a superficial Repentance Certainly none at all They are of no value not markable because the feal of Truth is not upon them 5. Though it be exceeding rich yet the purchase of it will put us to no expense It is bought without money or money-worth Censum non requirit nudo homine contenta est It requireth nothing but a man God doth not set it to sale to put us to charges nor is it reason he should For although those things we buy in the world become our own and we have power to dispose of them as we please yet the Truth is exposed to sale as Diogenes was with this question Who will buy a Master He that buyeth the Truth selleth not his estate but his liberty and buyeth a Lord and Master to whom he must bow and to whose disposal he must submit himself He that buyeth the Truth must be servant to the Truth and not the Truth to him Yea the Truth may as well be said to buy us as we it For it cometh with its reward in its hand It commandeth and withal promiseth which is a kind of bargain and contract Do this and live Be my servants and ye shall reign for evermore 6. That we may not be mistaken in our bargain take dross for silver embrace a cloud for Juno shades and phantasmes and darkness for light falshood for Truth this merchandise is set forth to sale in its own shape and face not masqued or veiled with riddles and obscurity Though some places of Scripture be as Gregory observeth like meat which by long meditation and study must be broken and chewed before they can be taken down yet the precepts of faith and good life which fill the whole compass of this Truth are like drink and may be received and digested as we find them Therefore here if we mistake we cannot plead excuse nor hope for pardon For this is as Hilary speaketh sub scientiae facultate nescire to grope at noon to be ignorant when God hath granted us the fairest possibility of knowledge hath plainly revealed his will and discovered not the hinder parts but the very face of Truth To be ignorant where the object inviteth and wooeth our understanding bringeth us in guilty not of ignorance but wilfulness not of an unhappy miss but contempt It is a common complaint And complaints for the most part are but apologies that the merchants of Truth hide their wares or shew them by an half-light that the Preacher is too deep that he flieth aloft beyond the reach of common capacities But as it is his duty to descend to them so it is not also their 's to make so fair a progress as to be able to rise up to him Quorsum docemus 2 Tim. 3.7 si semper docendi sitis as Quintilian told his scholars Why do we teach you if ye be alwaies learning and never come to the knowledge of the truth Why do we so often present the Truth before your eyes if ye will alwaies be Bats and never dare to look upon the Sun The Truth is the Preacher is not too deep but the Auditors will be dull and heavy And the reason why they are not taught is because they will not learn For if you do fontem à capite fodere lead them to the head of this fountain give them a reason for that easy truth which they acknowledge you are straight with them an
Heraclitus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dark and obscure Behold the fountain's head is open and the streams flow sweetly why do we not tast The Truth is exposed to the sun and the people why do we not buy Luke 1.78 The day-spring from on high hath visited us why are we still in darkness Is it not dulness of understanding but pride and sloth that keepeth us ignorant We are not too weak but we are too wise to learn It is a good saying of the Rabbines Error doctrinae pro superbia reputatur To erre where the Truth is so manifest is a sign of pride and they who thus mistake consult not with the Truth but with flesh and bloud Rom. 13 1. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers is a Text plain enough and yet we see many times Faction go for Faith and Rebellion for Religion Phil. 2.12 Work out your salvation with fear and trembling is as plain yet Fear is acccounted Diabolical and a dead Faith the onely foundation 1 Pet. 2.16 Vse not your liberty as a cloak for malitiousness Who is such a child in understanding as to number this among those things which are hard to be understood and yet how many have wrested it to their own destruction 2 Pet. 3.16 or hath the seditious boutefeu any other garment to cover him but his Christian Liberty when he steppeth forth in fury to break the bond of Peace This maketh many religions and no religion Self-conceit and a desire to seem wise headeth one sect Covetousness another Ambition a third and this plain and easy Truth is left behind to feed a little flock Talk what we will of Priests and Jesuites of Hereticks and Schismaticks it is Mammon and the Love of the world and Pride that make proselytes and where the first seduce a thousand these last seduce ten thousand for in this we cannot be deceived unless we first love the cheat And therefore as we must not take falshood for truth so we must be carefull not to take those truths for necessary which are not so The Truth was never more sincere and pure then while it was contained all in one Creed and that a short one as Erasmus saith When there were more the practical knowledge of it was less When this merchandise was spread abroad and divided into many parcells it was less seen S. Paul calleth it (a) Rom. 12.6 the proportion of faith (b) 2 Tim. 1.13 the form of sound words (c) Tit. 1.1 the truth which is after godliness To believe in God to love him to obey him To deny ungodliness and worldly lusts Tertullian speaking of these is bold to pronounce Nihil ultrâ scire est omnia scire To know nothing beyond or more then this is to know all that we should know And if we did but practise this we should have less noise and trouble to know what it is we ought to practise If we did walk according to this rule peace would be upon us Gal. 6.16 and mercy and upon the Israel of God But the great neglect of that integrity which should distinguish Christians from the world hath brought in that deluge of controversies which hath welnear covered and overwhelmed the face of the Church What malice what defiance what digladiations what gall and bitterness do we see amongst Christians What ink what bloud hath been spent in the cause of Religion How many innocents have been defamed how many Saints anathematized haw many millions cut down with the sword And yet this is all Believe and repent Oh what pitty is it that this royal Truth should be lost amid the noise and tumults which are raised for truths not necessary that the foundation should be cast down and buried in the outworks that true Piety should be trod under foot in the scuffle for that which is not essential to it and hath no more of it then its name To conclude this point Ye see the merchandise what that Truth is ye are to buy 1. It is fitted and proportioned to your souls Do ye fit and apply your souls unto it Oh what a poor deformed thing is a soul without it a representation of a damned spirit 2. It is fit for all sorts and conditions of men Therefore let old men and children scribes and idiotes Trades-men and Scholars come to this market for it is the next way unto heaven 3. It is comely and amiable Let us therefore make it our choice espouse our wills unto it love and embrace it not kiss and wound it nor worship it in our heart and persecute it in our brethren What madness is it to leave this Horn of beauty and to joyn with a fiend or a monstre 4. As it is lovely in it self so it giveth a loveliness to all other gifts blessings and endowments whatsoever Why should thy Money perish with thee Why should thy Wit in which thou delightest thy Strength whereof thou boastest yea thy Hearing thy Fasting thy Praying perish with thee Why should all thy virtues be as a cloud and as the early dew fall and go away Why should all thy good be good for nothing 5. Lastly it will put thee to no expense Then thou hast no excuse for thou carriest the price about with thee Come therefore and buy it without money or money-worth And then thou needest not ask with the Lawyer in the Gospel Luke 10.25 What shall I do to inherit eternal life for thou hast the price in thine hand This Truth is it the price of the kingdome of heaven and with it thou shalt purchase glory and immortality and eternal life The third point that offereth it self to our consideration is That the Truth must be bought It will not be ours unless we lay out something and purchase it Buy the Truth If ye look into the holy Scripture the shop where it is to be had ye shall find it ever carrying its price along with it Under what name soever it goeth the price is as it were written upon it John 6.27 If it be called that meat which endureth unto everlasting life the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 labour for it If it be called salvation the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 magìs operamini work more intend and double your labour Phil. 2.12 work it out If it be called the faith as it is Jude 3. the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we must earnestly contend for it And the Apostle biddeth us beware that we be not wearied and faint in our minds Heb. 12.3 start back fly off and offer no more because the price is so high Here is care required and labour working and doubling our work contention and perseverance till the last minute All which we give out of our proper substance For when we lay them out we spend our selves We do not stumble upon this Truth by chance as we may sometimes upon a Pearl or a piece of
Gold All the things under the Moon are as changeable in their approches in their acquisition in their loss as that planet is Sometimes we must travel and hazard our lives for them sometimes we find them and they are even flung upon us We are wont to call such as are suddenly made rich the Children and Favourites of Fortune But in this market Fortune and Chance have no hand at all she can neither help nor hurt They who come to this Emporium or Mart know not the face of Fortune neither when she smileth nor when she frowneth but leave her behind them when they beat this bargain Nay they know her to be nothing They place their hopes neither upon Chance nor upon Necessity If Truth were brought to us any of these wayes we could not be said to buy it Do I buy that chain which I am forced to wear or that pearl which lying in my way I do but stoup for and take up I cannot think that ever Heaven did open it self and take in those who never thought of it nor that any Saint did stumble on it and enter by chance Luke 15.4 If the Truth be found it is found as the lost Sheep was we go after it and sweat and labour and search for it till we find it They were the Pharisees of old that brought Fate in and a Necessity of all events And they may well bear the same name who though they abhor the word yet countenance the thing it self and leave the Truth and all Virtues else as it were upon the cast of a die For with them we neither do nor suffer any thing but we are born and bound to it And they run upon the same absurdity which the Pharisees did attribute all to Fate and Destiny or to that which is in effect the same and yet believe a Resurrection leave us in the chains of Necessity and yet promise life to all that buy the Truth and threaten death to all that sell it make us necessarily good or evil and yet the objects for Rewards and Punishments to work upon But this fatal Necessity doth overthrow it self For if it lead or force all things to their end if it work all in us then it worketh this also That we cannot believe it And it is necessary I should deny this Necessity for I was destined to pronounce against Destiny and my fate it is to acknowledge no such thing as Fate No the Truth is established as the heavens that it cannot be moved And as it looketh toward Eternity so there is a setled and eternal course by which it is conveyed unto us Wisdome hath set it out to sale not left it in the uncertain hands of Chance nor in the infallible conduct of Fate and Destiny She standeth by the way in the places of the paths Prov. 8.2 Isa 55.1 but her voice is Come and buy It is true Truth as well as Faith is the gift of God But first every gift is not received or if it be yet he that received it might have refused it and so Necessity hath no place and a gift it is though it be not received as a Pearl may be a merchandise though it be not bought Truth is the gift of God a light kindled by him and set up in the firmament of his Church and there it shineth though men turn not their eyes that way but fix them on the earth Ephes 2.8 Faith had been the gift of God though all the world had been infidels The Civilians tell us there is a twofold Donation pura and conditionalis There is an absolute gift which the giver bestoweth to no other end but to shew his bounty he giveth it because he will give it And there is a conditional gift which exacteth something from him who must receive it It is here Do ut des I give thee this that thou mayest give something for it And such a gift is Truth such a gift is Heaven We are Men to woo and draw the Truth and not Statues to have it engraven upon us and then remain as little moved with it as insensible of it as if we were stones We read of infused Habits and though those texts of Scripture which are brought to uphold them are not so sure and firm a foundation that they may stand there unshaken yet because the opinion is so generally received we are not over-ready to lay it by But if they be infused as they are infused into us so they are not infused without us They are poured not as water into a cistern but into living vessels fitted and prepared for them For if they were infused without us they could never be lost If we did not buy the Truth we could never sell it If Wisdome were thus infused into us we should never erre If Righteousness were thus infused the Will would ever as an obedient handmaid look up upon that Wisdome and never swerve or decline from it If Sanctity were thus setled on the Affections they could never rebel The Understanding could never erre for this Wisdome would ever enlighten it the Will could not be irregular for this Righteousness would alwayes bridle it the Affections could not distract us for they would ever be under command For as they were given without us so bringing with them an irresistible and uncontrollable force they would work without us But we shall find that all these are conditional gifts and that according to the method of Truth it self we cannot receive till we ask nor find till we seek Matth. 7.7 Psal 24.7 â— nor enter the everlasting gates of Truth till we knock And those who follow this method the Truth hath its proper and powerful operation in them It is their viaticum provision for their way meat to feed them and nourish them up to an healthful constitution And it is a garment to clothe them and to defend them from those poisonous blasts and breathings of their spiritual enemy which might annoy and distemper them But in those who fancy to themselves a large and supernatural pouring in when they receive nothing nor do any thing that they may there is no room for Truth for they are filled with air with their own flitting imaginations And if the Truth do enter it entereth them not as Truth but is wrested and corrupted and made the abetter of a lie Scripture is either mangled by them or put upon the rack used as Procrustes used his guests either cut off in some part of it or stretched too far It lieth in their stomack like an undigested lump and is turned into a disease It is like a garment not well put on it sittteth not well upon them they wear it and it becometh them not They wear it either for shew to take the beholder or as a cloak of maliciousness to deceive and destroy him We may observe that that which is so easily gotten and beareth onely the name of Truth is more busie and operative
were by the voice of the cryer and if thou wilt have it thou must buy it Ye see that Truth is a rich merchandise and that it must be bought Now in the next place we must know what it is to buy it As in all purchases so here something must be laid down And though we cannot set a price upon the Truth worthy of it it being in it self unvaluable and all the world not able to weigh down the least grain of it yet something there is which must be given for it The very heathen thought nothing to dear to purchase it amongst whom we read of some who flung away their goods and riches and bid defiance to pleasures ut nudam veritatem nudi expeditÃque sequerentur saith Lactantius that being stript of all they might meet with the naked Truth and embrace her So highly did they value the Truth that therein they placed their summum bonum their chief happiness If ye ask what the price is ye must give the answer is short Ye must give your selves Ye must lay down your selves at the altar of Truth and be offered up as a sacrifice for it Ye must offer up your Understandings fit and apply them to the Truth Ye must offer up your Wills and bow them to it Ye must strip and empty your selves of all your Affections at least be free from the power of them For the Affections raise a tempest in the soul and make it swell as stormy winds do the sea so that the Mind can no more receive the Truth then the troubled waves can receive and reflect the image of our face Not onely the seeds of moral conversation those practick notions with which we were born but also those seeds of saving Truth which we gather from the Scripture and improve by instruction and practice are then most obscured and darkned when pleasures and delights take possession of our affections As we often see in persons sore distempered with sickness the light of their reason dimmed and the mind disturbed by reason of vitious vapours arising from their corrupted humours so it is in the soul and understanding which could not but apprehend the Truth being so fitted and proportioned to it as ye have heard if it were not dazled and amazed with impertinent objects and phantasmes that intervene if the affections did not draw it to things heterogeneous and contrary to it Being blinded hereby it beholdeth all objects through the affections which as coloured glasses present all things much like unto themselves Thus Falshood getteth the face and beauty of Truth and that appeareth true which pleaseth though it hurt For the Affections do not onely hinder our judgment but prevent and preoccupate it Truth is plain and open to the eye but Love or Hatred Hope or Fear coming in between teach us first to turn from it and after to dispute against it The Love of our countrey maketh Truth and Religion national and confineth it within a province The Love of those whom our worldly affairs draw us to converse with shutteth it up yet closer and tieth it to a city to an house And to put off this Love we think is to wage war with Nature The Love of riches formeth a cheap and thriving Religion The Love of honour buildeth her a chair The Love of pleasure maketh her wanton and superstitious That which we Love still presenteth it self before our eyes and thence we take materials to build up that congregation which alone we think deserveth the name of a Church So that if we never beheld the face of the men yet by the form and draught of their Religion we may easily judge which way their affections sway them and to what coast they steer And as Love so Hatred transformeth not men alone but also the Truth it self and maketh it an heresy though in an Apostle yea though in our Saviour Luke 16.13 No man can serve two masters is as undeniable a principle as any in the Mathematicks yet because Christ spake it the Pharisees who were covetous derided him Luke 16.14 Micaiah was a true Prophet but Ahab believed him not because he hated him 1 Kings 22.8 How many Truths are condemned by the Reformed party onely because the Papists teach them And how many doth that Church anathematize because the Protestant holdeth them Maldonate in his Commentary on the Gospel is not ashamed to profess of an interpretation of one passage there that he would willingly subscribe and receive it as the truest had it not been Calvin's And have not we some who have condemned even that which is Truth and which is delivered in the language of Scripture and in the very same words upon no other reason but because it is still retained in the Mass-book As Tacitus speaketh of an hated Prince Inviso semel Principe seu bene seu malè facta premunt when a person is once grown odious in our eyes whatsoever he doth or saith whether good or evil whether true or false is as odious as he If an enemy do it the most warrantable act is a mortal sin and when he speaketh it the Truth it self is a lie All the argument we have against it is the person that speaketh it for we will not use his language As it is said of Marius that he so hated the Grecians that he would not walk the same way that a Greek had gone though it were the best Further we must lay down at the feet of Truth our Fears For Fear is the worst counsellor we can have Nunquam fidele consilium dat metus saith Seneca It never giveth us true and faithful counsel but flying from that which we fear it carrieth us away in its flight from the Truth it self Perjury is a monstrous sin of that bulk and corpulency that we cannot but see it yet Fear will lift up our hands and bind us to that which we know to be false and within a while teach us to plead for it Fear saith the Wise-man Wisd 17.12 is nothing else but the betrayer of those succours which Reason offereth When we are struck with Fear we are struck deaf and will neither hearken to our selves nor to seven wise men that can render a reason Prov. 26.16 This made (a) Gen. 3.8 10. Adam hide himself This sealed up the lips of (b) John 12.42 many chief rulers among the Jewes so that though they believed on Christ yet because of the Pharisees they did not confess him lest they should be put out of the synagogue And this opened the mouth of Peter to deny him He that is afraid of what evil may befall him is not a fit merchant to buy the Truth For though he have the price in his hand Prov. 17 16. he hath no heart to it A blast a puff of wind will drive him from this market And as Fear so Hope will soon betray and deceive us The Hope of honour of profit of favour of
we know he was but a man and we know he erred or else our Church doth in many things It were easie to name them But suppose he had broached as many lies as the Father of them could suggest yet those who in their opinions had raised him to such an height would with an open breast have received them all as oracles and have licked up poison if it had fallen from him For they had the same inducement to believe him when he erred which they had to believe him when he spake the Truth We do not derogate from so great a person we are willing to believe that he was sent from God as an useful instrument to promote the Truth But we do not believe that he sent him as he sent his Son into the world that all his words should be spirit and life John 6.63 that in every word he spake whosoever heard him heard the Father also Thus ye see how Prejudice may arise how it may be built upon a Church and upon a person and may so captivate and depress the Reason that she shall not be able to look up and see and judge of that Truth which we should buy I might instance in others and those too who have reformed the Reformation it self who have placed the Founder of their Sect as a star in a firmament and walk by the light which he casteth and by none other though it come from the Sun it self Who fixing their eye upon him alone follow as he led and in their zele and forward obsequiousness to his dictates many times outgo him and in his name and spirit work such wonders as we have shrunk and trembled at But manum de tabula we forbear lest whilest we strive to charm one serpent we awake an hundred and those such as can bite their brethren as Prejudice doth them I shall but instance in two or three prejudicial opinions which have been as a portcullis shut down against the Truth The first is That the Truth is not to be bought nor obtained by any venture or endeavour of ours but worketh it self into us by an irresistible force so as that when we shall have once got possession of it no principalities or powers no temptation no sin can deprive us of it but it will abide against all storms and assaults all subtilty and violence nay it will not remove though we do what in us lieth to thrust it out so that we may be at once possessours of it and yet enemies to it Now when this opinion hath once gained a kingdome in our heads and we count it a kind of treason or sacrilege to depose it why should we be smitten Isa 1.5 why should we be instructed any more Argument and reason will prove but paper-shot make some noise perhaps but no impression at all What is the tongue of the learned to him who will hearken to none but himself We talk of a preventing Grace to keep us from evil but this is a preventing ungracious perversness to withhold us from the Truth For when that which first speaketh in us which we first speak to our selves or others to us who can comply with that which is much dearer to us then our selves our corrupt humour and carnality when that is sealed and ratified for ever advice and counsel come too late When Prejudice is the onely musick we delight to hear what is the tongue of Men and Angels what are the instructions of the wise but harsh and unpleasant notes abhorred almost as much as the howlings of a damned spirit When we are thus rooted and built up in errour what can shake us It is impossible for us to learn or unlearn any thing For there is no reason we should be untaught that which we rest upon as certain and which we received as an everlasting truth written in our hearts by the finger of God himself and that as we think with an indeleble character Or why should we studie the knowledge of that which will be poured by an omnipotent and irrefragable hand into our minds Who would buy that which shall be forced upon him When the Jew is thus prepossessed when he putteth the Word of God from him Acts 13.46 and judgeth himself unworthy of everlasting life then there is no more to be said then that of the Apostles Lo we turn to the Gentiles Another Prejudice there is powerful in the world somewhat like the former namely a presumption that the Spirit of God teacheth us immediately and that a new light shineth in our hearts never seen before that the Spirit teacheth us not onely by his Word but against it That there is a twofold Word of God 1 Verbum praeparatorium a Word read and expounded to us by the ministery of men 2. Verâ—um consummatorium a Word which consummateth all and this is from the Spirit The one is as John Baptist to prepare the way the other as Christ to finish and perfect the work It pleaseth the Spirit of God say they by his inward operation to illuminate the mind of man with such knowledge as is not at all proposed in the outward Word and to instill that sense which the words do not bear Thus they do not onely lie to the holy Ghost but teach him to dissemble to dictate one thing and to mean another to tell you in your ear you must not do this and to tell you in your heart you may to tell you in his proclamation Matth. 5.21 you may not be angry with your brother and to tell you in secret you may murder him to tell you in the Church Matth. 21.13 you must not make his house a den of thieves and to tell you in your closet you may down with it even to the ground Juven Sat. 8. Inde Dolabella est atque hinc Antonius inde Sacrilegus Verres From hence are wars contentions heresies schismes from hence that implacable hatred of one another which is not in a Turk or a Jew to a Christian For tell me What may not they say or do who dare publish this when their Phansie is wanton It is the Spirit when their Humour is predominant It is the Spirit when their Lust and Ambition carry them on with violence to the most horrid attempts It is the Spirit when they help the Father of lies to fling his darts abroad It is the Spirit It is indeed the Spirit a Spirit of illusion a bold and impudent Spirit that cannot blush For when it is agreed on all sides that all necessary truths are plainly revealed in Scripture what Spirit must that be which is sent into the world to teach us more then all In a word it is a Spirit that teacheth us not that which is but that which our Lusts have already set up for truth A new light which is but a meteor to lead us to those precipices those works of darkness which no night is dark enough to cover Such a Spirit as proceedeth
agents Nor can he who maketh not use of his Reason on earth be a Saint in heaven We are rewarded because we chose that which right Reason told us was best And we are punished because we would not discover that evil which we had light enough to see but did yield to our lusts and affections and called it Reason The whole power of Man is in Reason and the vigour and power of Reason is in Judgment Man is so built saith S. Augustine ut per id quod in eo praecellit attingat illud quod cuncta praecellit that by that which most excelleth in him Reason he may attain to that which is the best of all eternal happiness Ratio omnis honesti comes est saith Seneca Reason alwaies goeth along with Virtue But when we do evil we leave Reason behind us nor is it in any of our waies Who hath known the mind of the Lord at any time Rom. 11.34 or who hath been his counseller It is true here Reason is blind Though it be decked with excellency and array it self with glory and beauty Job 40.9 10. it hath not an eye like God nor can it make a law as he or foresee his mind But when God is pleased to open his treasury and display his Truth before us then Reason can behold apprehend and discern it and by discourse which is the inquisition of Reason judge of it how it is to be understood and embraced For God teacheth not the beasts of the field or stocks or stones but Men made after his own image Man indeed hath many other things common to him with other creatures but Reason is his peculiar Therefore God is pleased to hold a controversie with his people to argue and dispute it out with them and to appeal to their Reason 1 Cor. 11.13 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Judge within your selves To judge what is said is a privilege granted to all the children of men to all who will venture for the Truth It is time for us now to proceed to the other hindrance of Truth Therefore II. We must cast away all Malice to the Truth all distasting of it all averseness from it Certainly this is a stone of offense a bulwork a mountain in our way which if we remove not we shall never enter our Canaan that floweth with milk and hony we shall never take possession of and dwell in the tabernacles of Truth Now Malice is either direct and downright or indirect and interpretative onely And both must be laid aside The former is an affected lothing of the Truth when the Will affecteth the ignorance of that which is right and will erre because it will erre when it shunneth yea hateth the Understanding when it presenteth it with such Truths as might regulate it and divert it from errour and this to the end that it may beat back all remorse silence the checks and chidings of Conscience and slumber those storms which she is wont to raise and then take its fill of sin lie down in it as in a bed of roses and solace it self and rejoyce and triumph therein Then we are embittered with hony hardened with mercy enraged by entreaties then we are angry at God's precepts despise his thunder-bolts slight his promises scoff at his miracles Then that which is wont to mollifie hardeneth us the more till at length our heart be like the heart of the Leviathan as firm as a stone Job 41.24 yea as hard as a piece of the nether mill stone Then satis nobis ad peccandum causa peccare it is a sufficient cause to do evil that we will do it And what impression can Truth make in such hearts What good can be wrought upon them to whom the Scripture attributeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 1.28 a reprobate mind who have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a reverberating mind an heart of marble to beat back all the strength and power of Truth unto whom God hath sent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2 Thes 2.11 Rom. 1.18 strong delusion that they should believe a lie who hold the Truth in unrighteousness and suppress and captivate it that it cannot work its work who oppose their Wrath to that Truth which perswadeth patience and their Lust against that which would keep them chast who set up Baal against God and the world against Christ Eph. 4.19 These are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 past feeling and have given themselves over to lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness They are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eph. 4.18 they have their understanding darkned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For wickedness by degrees doth destroy even the principles of goodness in us Hos 4.11 blindeth our eyes and taketh away our heart as the Prophet speaketh and maketh us as if we had no heart at all Either 1. by working out of the understanding the right apprehension of things For when the Will chuseth that which is opposite to the Truth non permittit Intellectum diu stare in dictamine recto it swayeth the Understanding taketh it off from its right dictates maketh it deny its own receptions so that it doth not consider that which it doth consider it averteth and turneth it to apply it self to something that is impertinent and maketh it find out reasons probable or apparent against that Truth which had its former assent that so that actual displacency which we found in the entertainment of the contrary may be cast out with the Truth it self We are willing to leave off to believe the Truth that we may leave off to condemn our selves When this light is dim the Conscience slumbreth but when it spreadeth it self then the sting is felt In our ruff and jollity we forget we have sinned but when the hand of vengeance removeth the veil and we see the Truth which we had hid from our eyes then we call our sins to remembrance and they are set in order before us Where there is knowledge of the Truth there will be conscience of sin but there will be none if we put that from us Or else 2. positively when the Will joyneth with Errour and embraceth that which is evil and then setteth the Understanding on work to find out the most probable means and the fairest and smoothest wayes to that which it hath set up for its end For the Understanding is both the best and the worst counseller When it commandeth the Will it speaketh the words of wisdome giveth counsel as an oracle of God and leadeth on in a certain way unto the Truth But when a perverse Will hath got the upper hand and brought it into a subserviency unto it then like the hand of a disordered dial it pointeth to any figure but that it should Then it attendeth upon our Revenge to undermine our enemy it teacheth our Lust to wait for the twilight it lackeyeth after our Ambition and helpeth us into the uppermost seat it is as active
of themselves but he that thus findeth his life shall lose it and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it The loss of our lives for righteousness sake is a purchase Rejoyce and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven For this Stephen was stoned Paul beheaded the Martyrs tortured So persecuted they the Prophets which were before you In the next place as a good Cause so a good Life doth fit and qualifie us to suffer for righteousness sake Non habent martyrum mortem qui non habent Christianorum vitam saith Augustine He dieth not the death of a Martyr who liveth not the life of a Christian An unclean beast is not fit to make a sacrifice Nor will the crown of Martyrdome sit upon his head who goeth on in his sin It is to the wicked that God saith What hast thou to do to declare my statutes and What hast thou to do to suffer for them For he that suffereth for them declareth them Therefore S. Augustine calleth the Donatists who in a perverse emulation of the glory of the true Martyrs leapt down from rocks and flung themselves into the water and were drowned sceleratos homicidas wicked homicides and unnatural murtherers of themselves What Cyprian speaketh of Schism is as true of other mortal sins not repented of Non Martyrium tollit not Martyrdom it self can expiate or blot it out For can we think that he that hath taken his fill in sin all his life long and still made his strength the law of unrighteousness should in a moment wash away all his filth and pollutions baptismo sanguinis with his own bloud It may supply for those other pious souls who were never washed in the other laver that of Baptism because persecution or death deprived them of that benefit for what cannot be done cannot oblige But how a man should draw out his life in an open hostility to Christ and trifle with him and contemn him all his dayes and then before repentance and reconciliation which indeed is in the very act of hostility bow to him and die for him I cannot see Take S. Pauls black catalogue of the works of the flesh Adultery Gal. 3. fornication uncleanness lasciviousness idolatry witchcraft hatred variance emulation wrath strife seditions heresies envyings murthers drunkenness revellings and not one of these but will infringe and weaken the testimony of any man and render him a suspected witness in our Courts on Earth And shall the truth of Christ stand in need of such Knights of the post who will speak for her when they oppose her Take that bed-roll of wicked men which the Apostle prophesied should come in these last and perilous times 2 Tim. 3 1-5 Lovers of their own selves Covetous Boasters Proud Blasphemers Disobedient to parents Vnthankful Vnholy Without natural affection Truce-breakers False accusers Incontinent Fierce Despisers of those that are good Traitors Heady High minded Lovers of pleasures more then lovers of God Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof and may not the Gospel be ashamed of such Professors and Martyrs as these Or shall we look for heaven in hell and hope to find a Martyr amongst a generation of vipers Or is he fit to be advocate for any truth who hath the faith of Christ with respect of persons Then we shall have factious Martyrs seditious Martyrs malicious Martyrs profane Martyrs sacrilegious Martyrs And if these be Martyrs we may say of them as Tertullian did of the Heathen Gods Potiores apud inferos There be honester men in hell then these No a good Cause and a good Life must be our conductors to the Cross must lead us by the hand to the fiery trial must as it were anoint us to our graves and prepare us for this great work Otherwise whatsoever we suffer is not properly Persecution but an execution of justice It may be here perhaps demanded What then shall he do who having fettered himself in the snare of the Devil hath not yet shaken it off by true repentance whose conscience condemneth him of many gross and grievous sins which yet himself hath not condemned in his flesh by practising the contrary vertues What shall a notorious sinner do if he be called to this great office if his fortunes and life be brought in hazard for the profession of some article of faith or some truth which he believeth is necessary to salvation What shall he do being shut up between these three a bad conscience assurance of that truth he professeth and the terrour of death Shall he hold fast the truth or subscribe to the contrary Shall he suffer without true repentance of his former sins or repent of the truth which he professeth Shall he deny against his conscience what he knoweth to be true or shall he suffer and comfort himself in this one act as a foundation firm enough to raise a hope on of remission of sin Here is a great streight a sad Dilemma like that of the servant in the Comedy Si faxit perit si non faxit vapulat If he do it he may perish and if he do it not he may be beaten He may suffer for the truth and yet suffer for his sins and if he do it not he hath denied the faith and is worse then an infidel But beloved this is an instance like that of Buridan's ass between two bottles of hay knowing not which to chuse an instance of what peradventure never or very seldom cometh to pass We may suppose what we please we may suppose the heavens to stand still and the earth to move and some have thought so we may suppose what in nature is impossible And this if it be not impossible yet is so improbable that it hardly can gain so much credit as to win an assent For that he who all his life long hath cast Christ's word 's behind him should now seal them with his bloud that they are true that a conscience so beaten so wasted so overwhelmed with the habit of sins should now take in and entertain a fear of so little a sin as the denial of one truth in respect of the contempt of all that he that hath swallowed this monstrous camel should strain at this gnat that he that hath trampled Christ's bloud under his feet should shed his own for some one dictate of his is a thing which we may suppose but hardly believe Or tell me Where should this sting and power of conscience lye hid Or can conscience drive us to the confession of one truth which had no power to withhold us from polluting our selves with so many sins Holding faith saith S. Paul 1 Tim. 1.19 and a good conscience which some having put away concerning faith have made ship-wreck So near an alliance there is between Faith and a good Conscience that we must either keep them both or lose them both Faith as Saint Paul intimateth in that Text is as the
evidence or confirmation at all And therefore saith Tertullian Christ shewed not himself openly to the people after his resurrection ut fides non mediocri praemio destinata difficultate constaret that faith which is destined to a crown might not consist without some difficulty but commend it self by our obedience Nec tam veniam quà m praemium habet ignorare quod credis Not perfectly to know what thou believest doth so little stand in need of pardon that it will procure and bring with it a reward What obedience is it for a man to assent to this That the whole is greater then the part That the Sun doth shine or to any of those truths which are so visible to the eye that they force the understanding and leave there an impossibility â—o dissent But when the object is in part hidden and in part seen when the truth which I assent to hath more probability to speak for it and persuade it then can be brought to shake and weaken it John 20.29 then our Saviour himself pronounceth Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed Again it were in vain that Christ should thus visibly every day shew himself We have Moses and the Prophets We have the testimony of his Disciples who saw him ascend And if we will not believe them neither would we have believed if we had been with them on mount Olivet and seen him received up into the cloud For if we will not believe God's word we should soon learn to discredit his miracles though they were done before the Sun and the people God rained down Manna upon the Israelites For all this they sinned still and believed not his wondrous works The Pharisees saw Christ's miracles yet would have stoned him The people said He hath done all things well yet these were they who crucified the Lord of Life And the reason is plain For though Faith be an act of the Understanding yet it dependeth upon the Will Whence it cometh to pass that many men build up an opinion without any basis or foundation at all without any evidence nay against all evidence whatsoever Quot voluntates tot fides So many Wills as there are nay so many Humours so many Creeds there be For every man believeth as he will I dare appeal to men of the poorest observation and least experience What else is that which turneth us about like the hand of a dial from one point to another from one persuasion to a contrary What is that that wheeleth and circleth us about that we touch at every opinion and settle on none How cometh it to pass that I now tremble at that which anon I embrace though I have the same evidence that that is not Perjury to day which was so yesterday that that is Devotion and Zeal now which from my youth upwards to this present I branded with the loathsom name of Sacrilege How is it that my belief shifteth so many scenes and presenteth it self in so many several shapes Beloved it is the prevalency and victory of our Sensitive part over our Reason that maketh so many several so many contrary impressions in the mind Self-love and the Love of the world these frame our Creeds these plant and build these root out and pull down build up a belief and then beat it down to the ground and then set up another in its place For commonly we believe and disbelieve for the same reason We are Atheists for advantage and we are Christians for advantage We embrace the Truth for our profit and convenience and for our profit we renounce it and we make the same overture for heaven which we do for destruction will believe any thing for a truth that flattereth our humour and count that Truth it self a heresie that thwarteth it In a word that we believe not the Truth is not for want of evidence but for want of will Last of all the knowledge a Christian hath of these high mysteries can be no other but by Faith Novimus si credimus Christian dost thou believe Thou hast then been at mount Olivet and seen thy crucified Saviour ascend into heaven With S. Stephen thou hast seen the glory of God and Jesus standing at his right hand And though thou canst not argue or dispute though thou canst not untie every knot and resolve every doubt though thou canst not silence the Jew nor stop the mouth of the unbelieving Arheist yet qui credit satis est ei quod credat there is required of thee no more then to believe and to believe is salvation One man saith the Father hath faith another hath also skill and ability to stand out against all the world and comâ— forth a defender of the faith another is strong and mighty in faith but not so able with art and skill to maintain it The one is doctior non fidelior The one hath advantage and preeminence over the other in learning and knowledge but not in faith may be the deeper scholar but not the better Christian may be of necessary use titubantibus to men who doubt but not credentibus to those who stand fast in the faith and liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free Both have the same evidence and it may be as powerful in the one for practice as it is in the other for speculation and argument We know those who saw Christ suscitantem mortuos raising up men from the dead believed not when he believed and confessed him who saw him pendentem in ligno hanging on the cross Surgunt indocti Simple and unlearned men take the kingdom of heaven by violence when the great Rabbies stand below and make no approch Illi ratiocinentur nos credamus Let the wise and the scribe and the disputer of this world argue and doubt our rejoycing is in our faith Let them dispute we will fall down at this great sight Let them reason we will believe not onely that this Jesus was thus taken up but that he shall come again Which is another article of our Creed and our last part and must now serve onely for conclusion And it is good to conclude with comfort And VENIET He shall come again was not onely a Resolve but a Message of comfort by two Angels who stood by in albis in the colours of joy to comfort the Disciples who were now troubled and did stoop for heaviness of heart because Christ was taken away He shall come again Prov. 12.25 was that good word which did make their hearts glad made them return to Jerusalem as Christ ascended into heaven in Jubilo in triumph But now it may be a word of comfort yet not unto all that shall hear it That which is comfort to one may be a sentence of condemnation to another The VENIET He shall come again may open as the heavens to receive the one and as the gates of hell to devour the other For what is a promise to him that is not partaker of
furta fidei the thefts and pious depredations of Faith But that Faith should be idle or speechless or dead is contrary to its nature and proceedeth from our depraved dispositions from Love of the world and Love of our selves which can silence it or lull it asleep or bury it in oblivion Thus we may have Faith as if we had it not and use it as we should use the world as if we used it not or worse abuse it not believe and say it but believe and deny it not believe and be saved but believe and be damned For the Devil can haereticare propositiones make propositions which are absolutely true heretical Believe and be saved is as true as Gospel nay it is the Gospel it self but by his art and deceit many believe and are by so much the bolder in the wayes which lead unto Death believe Jesus to be the Lord and contemn him believe him to be a Saviour and upon presumption of mercy make themselves uncapable of mercy and because he saveth sinners will be such sinners as he cannot save because they believe he taketh away the sins of the world will harden themselves in those sins which he will not take away Many there be who do veritatem sed non per vera tenere maintain the Truth but by those wayes which are contrary to the Truth make that which should confirm Religion destroy Religion and their whole life a false gloss upon a good Text having a form of godliness but denying the power of it crying Jesus is the Lord but scourging him with their blasphemies as if he were a slave and fighting against him with their lusts and affections as if he were an enemy sealing him up in his grave as if he were not that Jesus that Saviour that Lord but in the Jews language that deceiver that blasphemer But this is a most broken and imperfect language And though we are said to believe it when we cannot believe it to have the habit of Faith when we have not the use of Reason and so cannot bring it forth into act as some Divines conceive though it be spoke for us at the Font when we cannot speak and though when we can speak it we speak it again and again as often almost at we speak Lord Lord though we gasp it forth with our last breath and make it the last word we speak yet all this will not make up the Dicere all this will not rise to thus much as to say JESUS IS THE LORD Therefore In the third place that we may truly say it we must speak it to God as God speaketh to us whose word is his deed who cannot lie who Numb 23.19 if he saith it will doe it if he speak it will make it good And as he speaketh to us by his Benefits which are not words but blessings the language of Heaven by his Rain to water the earth by his Wool to clothe us and by his Bread to feed us so must we speak to him by our Obedience by Hearts not hollow by Tongues not deceitful by Hands pure and innocent Our heart conceiveth and our obedience is the report made abroad And this is indeed LO QUI to speak out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to make our works vocal and our words operative to have lightning in our words and thunder in our deeds as Nazianzene spake of Basil that not onely Men and Angels may hear and see and applaud us but this Lord himself may understand our dialect and by that know us to be his children and accept and reward us In our Lord and Saviour's Alphabet these are the Letters in his Grammar these are the Words Meekness and Patience Compassion and Readiness to forgive Self-denial and Taking up our cross This must be our Dialect We cannot better express our Jesus and our Lord then idiomate operum by the language of our works by the language of the Angels whose Elogium is They doe his will the Tongue of Angels is not so proper as their Ministery for indeed their Ministery is their Tongue by the language of the Innocents who confessed him to be the Lord not by speaking but by dying by the language of the blessed Martyrs who in their tumultuary executions when they could not be heard for noise were not suffered to confess him said no more but took their death on it And this is truly to say Jesus is the Lord. For if he be indeed our Lord then shall we be under his command and beck Not a thought must rise which he would controll not a word be uttered which he would silence not an action break forth which he forbideth not a motion be seen which he would stop The very name of Lord must awe us must possess and rule us must inclose and bound us and keep us in on every side Till this be done nothing is done nothing is said We are his purchase and must fall willingly under his Dominion For as God made Man a little World so hath he made him a little Commonwealth Tertullian calleth him Fibulam utriusque substantiae the Clasp or Button which tieth together two diverse substances the Soul and the Body the Flesh and the Spirit And these two are contrary one to the other saith S. Paul are carried diverse wayes the Flesh to that which is pleasing to it and the Spirit to that which is proportioned to it looking on things neither as pleasing nor irksom but as they may be drawn in to contribute to the perfection and beauty of the soul Gal. 5.17 They lust and struggle one against the other and Man is the field the theatre where this battel is fought and one part or other still prevaileth Many times nay most times the Flesh with her sophistry prevaileth with the Will to joyn with her against the Spirit against those inclinations and motions which the Word and the Spirit beget in us And then Sin taketh the chair the place and throne of Christ and is Lord over us reigneth as S. Paul speaketh in our mortal bodies If it say Go we go and if it say Come we come and if it say Doe this we doe it It maketh us lay down that price for dung with which we might purchase heaven See how Mammon condemneth one to the mines to dig for metalls and treasure for that money which will perish with him See how Lust fettereth another with a look and the glance of an eye and bindeth him with a kiss which will at last bite like a serpent See how Self-love driveth on thousands as Balaam did his beast on the point of the sword And thus doth Sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 6.12 Lord it and King it over us And in this bondage and slavery can we truly say Jesus is the Lord when he is disgraced deposed and even crucified again Beloved whilest this fighting and contention lasteth in us something or other will lay hold on us and draw us within its
They had a full harvest we our sheaf yet our sheaf may make an offering Though our coyn be smaller yet the same image and stamp is on them both and the Spirit will own us though we weigh less All this is true But yet I must still remember you that whilest I build up the power of the Spirit I erect no asylum or sanctuary for illusions and wilful mistakes and when I have raised a fort and strong-hold for sober Christians I mean it not a shelter or refuge for mad-men and phantasticks God forbid that Truth should be banished out of the world because some men by false illations have made her factious or that Errour should straight be crowned with approbation because perhaps we read of some men who have been bettered with a lie The teaching of the Spirit it were dangerous to teach it were there not means to try and distinguish the Spirit 's instructions from the suggestions of Satan or the evaporations of a sick and loathsome brain or our own private Humour which is as great a Devil Beloved 1 John 4.1 saith the Apostle believe not every spirit that is every inspiration but try the spirits whether they be of God for many false prophets are gone out into the world that is have taken the chair and dictate magisterially what they please in the name of the Spirit when themselves are carnal And he giveth the rule by which we should try them Vers 2 Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God that is Whosoever striveth to advance the Kingdom of Christ and to set up the Spirit against the Flesh to magnifie the Gospel to promote and further men in the wayes of innocency and perfect obedience which infallibly lead to happiness is from God that is every such inspiration is from the Spirit of God For therefore doth the Spirit breathe upon us that he may make us like unto God and so draw us to him that where he is we may be also But those inspirations which bring in God to plead for Baal which cry up Religion to gain the world which call their own discipline Christ's Discipline which he never framed and spurn at his to maintain their own which tread down Peace and Charity and all that is indeed praise-worthy under their feet to make way for their unguided lust to pace it more delicately to its end which sigh out Faith and Grace and Christ like mourners about the streets which attend a funeral when the World and Satan hath filled their hearts and thus sow in tears that they may reap the profits and pleasures of this present world with joy which magnifie God's will that they may do their own these men these spirits cannot be from God By their fruits ye shall know them For their hypocrisie as well and cunningly wrought as it is is but a poor cobweb-lawn and we may easily see through it even see these spiritual men sweating and toiling for the Flesh these Saints digging in the minerals labouring for the bread that perisheth and making haste to be rich For though many times their wine be the poison of dragons and their milk not at all sincere yet they are not to be bought without money or money-worth Though GLORIA PATRI Glory to God on high be the Prologue to the Play for what doth a Hypocrite but play yet the whole drift and business of every Scene and Act is chearfully to draw altogether in this From hence we have our gain The Angel speaketh the Prologue and Mammon and the Flesh make the Epilogue Date manus Why should not every man give them his hands Surely such Roscii such cunning Actors deserve a Plaudite By their fruits ye shall know them For what though the voice be Jacobs Ye may know Esau by his hands What though the Devil turn Angel of light Ye may know him by his claws by his malice and rage For how can an Angel of light tear men in pieces By their fruits ye may know them So ye see this inconvenience and mischief which sometimes is occasioned by the Doctrine of the Spirit 's Teaching is not unavoidable It is not necessary though I mistake and take the Devil for an Angel that the holy Ghost should be put to silence Though Corah and his complices perish in their gainsayings yet God forbid that all Israel should be swallowed up in the same gulf Samuel runneth to Eli 1 Sam. 3. Vers 9. when the voice was God's but was taught at last to answer Speak Lord for thy servant heareth Though there were many false Prophets yet Micaiah was a true one Though there be many false Prophets come into the world yet the Spirit of God is a Spirit of truth and is not onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our chief but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our sole Instructor Our last Part In which we shall be very brief We are told in the verse next after the Text There are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit And we may say There are diversities of teachers but the same Spirit because be the conveyances and conduits never so many through which the knowledge of our Lord Jesus is brought unto us if the Sririt move not along with it it may be water indeed but not of life Because all means are but instrumental but He the prime Agent we may well call him not onely the chief but the sole Instructor The Church of Christ is DOMUS DOCTRINAE the House of learning as it is called in the Chaldee Paraphrase and COLUMNA VERITATIS 1 Tim. 3.15 the Pillar of the truth because it presenteth the knowledge of Christ as a Pillar doth an Inscription and even offereth and urgeth it to every eye that it may not slip out of our memories and SCHOLA CHRISTI the School of Christ in respect of his Precepts and Discipline Such glorious things have been spoken of the Church But now methinks this House is ruinous this Pillar shaken this School broken up and dissolved and the Church which bore so great a name standeth for nothing but the walls A Jesuite telleth us that at the very name of the CHURCH hostis expalluit the Enemy that is such as he called Hereticks did look pale and tremble But what is it now amongst us Nothing or but a Name and in truth a Name is nothing And that too is vanishing for it is changed into another And yet it is the same for they both signifie one and the same thing So prevalent amongst us is that Phansie and Folly which is taken for the Spirit A Church no doubt there is and will be but we onely see it as we do the Church Triumphant through a glass darkly Or she may be fair as the Moon clear as the Sun but sure she is not terrible as an army with banners Secondly the Word is a Teacher And Christ by open proclamation hath commanded us to have recourse unto it
For a Debt and a Forfeiture may be paid at last and if the debtor be not able to pay he may give his service his body some satisfaction and some satisfaction is better then none But he that committeth Sin is the servant of sin for ever and can never redeem it if for no other reason yet for this alone that he did commit it For not a myriad of vertues can satisfie for any one breach of our obligation and no hand but that of Mercy can cancell and make it void If we be in debt with God nothing can quit us but forgiveness And therefore we pray Forgive us our debts And so we fall upon our next part What is meant by Remission of sins or Forgiveness of debts And here we lie prostrate before the throne of God and desire forgiveness And what that is we cannot be to seek if we consider those judicial terms which the Scripture useth For we read of a a 1 Cor. 4.4 Judge of a b 2 Cor. 5.10 judgment seat of a c Rom. 2.15 witness of a d Rom. 3.19 conviction of a e Col. 2.14 hand-writing of an f 1 John 2.1 Advocate and in this Petition our sins are delivered in the notion of debts So that when we pray for the forgiveness of our sins we do as it were stand at the bar of God's justice and plead for mercy acknowledge the hand-writing but beseech him to cancel it confess our sins but sue out our pardon that we may be justified from those things from which by the Law we could not and though we are not yet for his sake who is our Surety and Advocate to count us righteous and pronounce us innocent This is all we learn in Scripture concerning Remission of sins Et quicquid à Deo discitur totum est as the Father speaketh That which we learn from God is all we can learn But as the Philosophers agreed there was a chief good and happiness which man might attain unto but could not agree what it was so it hath fallen out with Christians They all consent that there is mercy with God that we may be saved they make Remission of sins an article of their Creed but then they rest not here but to the covering of their sins require a garment of righteousness of their own thread and spinning to the blotting out of their sins some bloud and some virtue of their own and to the purging them out some infused habit of herent righteousness and so by their interpretations and additions and glosses they leave this Article in a cloud then which the day it self is not clearer As Astronomers when a new star appeareth in their Hemisphere dispute and altercate till that star go out and remove it self out of their sight so have we disputed and talked Justification and Remission of sins almost out of sight For there is nothing more plain and even without rub or difficulty nothing more open to the eye and yet nothing at which the quickest apprehensions have been more dazled Not to speak of the heathen who counted it a folly to believe there were any such thing and could not see how he that killed a man should not be a homicide or he no adulterer who had defiled a woman quibus melius fide quam ratione respondetur whom we may give leave to reason whilest we believe It hath been the fault of Christians when the truth lay in their way to pass it by or leap over it and to follow some phansies and imaginations of their own How many combates had S. Paul with the false brethren who would bring in the observation of the Ceremonial and Moral Law as sufficient to salvation How did he travel in birth again of the Galatians that Christ might be truly formed in them And yet how many afterwards did Galaticari as Tertullian speaketh were as foolish as the Galatians How many made no better use of it then to open a gap and make a way to let in all licentiousness and profaneness of life nay went so far as to think it most necessary as if Remission of sins were not a medicine to purge but a provocative to inerease sin Nor was this doctrine onely blemished by those monsters of men who sate down and consulted and did deliberately give sentence against the Truth but received some blot and stain from their hands who were the stoutest champions for it who though they saw the Truth and did acknowledge it yet let that fall from their pens which posterity after took up to obscure this doctrine and would not rest content with that which is as much as we can desire and more then we can deserve Remission of sins Hence it was that we were taught in the Schools That Justification is a change from a state of unrighteousness to a state of righteousness That as in every motion there is a leaving of one term to acquire another so in Justification there is expulsion of sin and infusion of grace Which is most true in the concrete but not in the abstract in the Justified person but not in Justification which is an act of God alone From hence those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those unsavoury and undigested conclusions of the Church of Rome That to justifie a sinner is not to pronounce but to make him just That the formal cause of Justification is inherent sanctity That our righteousness before God consisteth not onely in remission of sins That we may redeem our sins as well as Christ we from temporal as he from eternal pain And then this Petition must run thus FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES that is Make us so just that we may need no forgiveness Forgive us the breach of the Law because we have kept the Law Forgive us our sins for our good works Forgive me my intemperance for my often fasting my incontinency for my zeal my oppression for my alms my murther for the Abby and Hospital which I built my fraud my malice my oppression for the many Sermons I have heard A conceit which I fear findeth room and friendly enterteinment in those hearts which are soon hot at the very mery mention of Popery or Merit In a word they say and unsay sometimes bring in Remission of sins and sometimes their own Satisfaction and so set S. Paul and their Church at such a distance that neither St. Peter himself nor all the Angels and Saints she prayeth to will be able to reconcile them and make his Gratis and their Merits meet in one It is true every good act doth justifie a man so far as it is good and God so far esteemeth them holy and good and taketh notice of his graces in his â—â—â—ldren he registereth the Patience of Job the Zeal of Phinehas the Devotion of David not a cup of cold water not a mite flung into the Treasury but shall have its reward But yet all the works of all the Saints in the world cannot satisfie
Father doth of Idolatry It is summus seculi reatus tota causa judicii It is a vocal crying sin which like the importunate Widow in the Gospel will not suffer the Judge to rest till he do justice This filleth the world with the evil of sin and of punishment not so much a firm opinion that God may be deceived and mocked as a bold presumption by which we make him such a God as we would have him a God that may be trifled with a God that like the Heathen Gods may be taken by the beard that those fierce astonishing speeches which we find in Scripture are but words of art 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spoken to affright men rather then words of intended truth which will bring effect according to their natural meaning as indulgent fathers many times threaten their children with much hard language which they never intend to make good And this conceit of Gods facility and easiness that he so quickly admits of excuse is the principal ground and occasion of all the sins in the world To make it plainer yet and point out to some particulars in which we mock God when we imagine no such thing and so to conclude this point I cannot imagine when I consider that Majesty which no mortal can comprehend that Dust and Ashes the works of Gods hand should be able to put a trick upon him and mock him This were to set his creature in his Throne and place extreme Weakness and Folly above Wisdome it self Psal 50. Thou verily thoughtest I was like unto thee saith God to the Hypocrite It was but a thought a wavering imagination which enters and goes out and never remains at one stay God is not cannot be mocked For if he had believed there was a God Diagoras himself would not have mockt him nor ever thought it possible But the truth is as the relation stands betwixt God and his creature Man is said to do that which he doth not which he cannot do to fight with him who is omnipotent to dispute with him whom we cannot answer one of a thousand to contend to grieve him who cannot be moved to weary him to press him as a cart is with sheaves who by his word made and by his word beareth all things who is to himself an everlasting sabbath and rest Non ille minùs peccat cui sola deest facultas saith the Casuist We do not do it the less because we cannot do it because we vvould do it if we could Ipsa sibi imputatur voluntas saith the Father To vvill it is to do it To look upon a woman and lust after her is to commit adultery yet the vvoman as chast as before So God cannot be mockt yet vve may mock him As in the rape of Lucrece two are in the fact yet but one as Augustine speaks committed adultery For if Tully could truly say that to resist the Law of Nature and to vvalk contrary to that light which vve brought vvith us into the vvorld is nothing less then Gigantum more bellare cum Diis to vvage vvar vvith the Gods as the Giants did then may vve as truly affirm that to dissemble vvith God to flatter him vvith our lips vvhen our heart is far from him to fall down before him in a complement vvhen vve break his laws to act our part as upon a stage to vvish he had no eye to study to believe it is to mock him To be more particular yet For yet you may ask vvherein vve mock him For vve are very slow and unwilling to believe any evil of our selves and are hardly induced to think vve ever did that vvhich vve do every day Mock God! nay God forbid And that God forbid that prayer Mal. 3.7 is but a mock God calls to the Jews Return unto me and they reply Wherein shall we return as if they never had been averse from him but had been alwayes vvith him even in his bosome And vers 8. Ye have robbed me saith God and they say Wherein have we robbed thee as if they vvere utterly ignorant of any such matter but had been vvholly imployed in bringing tiths into his store-house and meat into his house They forsook him they robb'd him and yet are innocent They did and did not and God himself is made no better then a columniator So that this position is true in this sense also God is not mocked for no man thinks no man vvill acknovvledge no man dares profess that he mocks him But vve cannot thus shake off the guilt nor put it from us For vvhen vve do those things to God vvhich vve do to men vvhen vve mock them this is enough to put us into the seat of Mockers and enroll us amongst the Mockers of God When Laban gave Jacob blear-ey'd Leah for beautiful Rachel Gen. 29.25 it vvas a mock What hast thou done saith Jacob did not I serve thee for Rachel why hast thou mocked me When Micah laid an image in the bed for David and said he was sick it vvas a mock For Saul said unto Micah why hast thou deceived me When God requires justice and righteousness and we bring him vain oblations when he calls for the heart and we lift up our voice when he calls for a working fighting conquering faith and we give him a dead faith when God calls for Faith which is a stone a corner-stone to build that Obedience upon which shall reach to Heaven and we make Faith a pillow to sleep on and sin the more securely because we believe when God bids us strengthen our hands that hang down and we open our ears when God bids us Vp and be doing and we count all done in Hearing when God calls for a New creature and we return him circumcision and uncircumcision empty sacraments and lazy formalities Deut. 15. when God requires a sacrifice without blemish and we offer up that which is lame or blind when God requires perfection and we give him our weak blind halting endeavours when God seeks a Man and we give him a picture Psal 35.16 what are we but hypocritical mockers For what are Hypocrites but Players the Zanias of Religion whose art it is to deceive who are so long conversant in outward performances that they rest in them as in the end of the Law are content with shews and expressions and at last think there is no service no religion but in these As the poor Spartan travailing into another country and seeing the beams and posts of houses squared and carved which he had never seen before asked if trees did grow so in those countries So these mockers of God these formal professours having been long acquainted with a form of Godliness sqared and carved and set out with shew and advantage considering what eloquence there is in an attentive Ear a turned Eye an Angels Tongue a forced Sigh to win applause and make them glorious in the eyes of men fall at last upon this
happiness He taketh not away the first but he doth establish the second Briefly then we may observe these two parts 1. the Womans attestation 2. Christ's reply the Womans dictor and Christ's In the first Wisdome is justified of one of her children against all the gainsayings of the Jews and contradiction of sinners to the second Wisdome her self pointeth out to true happiness openeth her treasuries to all who will receive her instructions and proclaimeth an everlasting jubilee to those who hear the word of God and keep it In the handling of the former part we shall pass by these steps First we will point out the Occasion of the speach As he spake these things it came to pass Next we will take notice of the Person who took hold of the occasion and made so good use both of Christ's miracles and doctrine We find no name at all but some upon no ground conjecture that it was Martha's maid The Text saith no more but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a certain woman of the company but one of a multitude and that an unknown obscure woman not those learned clerks the Scribes and Pharisees Thirdly we shall propose to your Christian imitation the vehemencie and heat of her Affection Her heart was hot within her and the fire burned and at last it brast forth into a pure flame and she spake with her tongue She did not conceal and suppress her thoughts nor whisper them into the ear of a stranger but lift up her voice that the deadliest enemies of Christ even the Pharisees might hear Lastly we will weigh and consider the speach it self Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that thou hast sucked and tender it to you as near as we can in its full weight And all these particulars will amount to this sum That a poor silly woman saw more of the excellencie of Christ then did all the Doctors and Masters of Israel These materials our first part affordeth us to work upon Now as the Woman from what she had heard and seen took occasion to magnifie Christ so from her affection and free testimony Christ taketh occasion further to instruct her Blessed is the womb that bare thee saith the Woman Yea rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it saith Christ Which maketh our second part Wherein we shall consider 1. the Form 2. the Matter and Substance of the words For the Form some would have the words adversative others meerly affirmative Some place them in opposition to the Womans affection Others too jealous of that honour which is given to the blessed Mother of Christ make them a plain and naked affirmation willing rather that Christ's words should want of their weight then that one jote or tittle of the Womans honour should fall to the ground I will not be too solicitous to take up the quarrel between them nor indeed is it worth the while The very first words Yea rather make it plain that the Womans Blessed was defective and wanted weight aad therefore Christ who is the Wisdome of the Father filleth it up He doth not which is the best kind of redargution with any bitterness deny what she saith but by a gentle corrective setteth her at rights She commendeth and magnifieth a corporal he preferreth a spiritual birth For as there is fructus ventris the fruit of the womb so is there partus mentis a conception and birth of the mind We conceive Christ by our hearing the word but when we keep it Christ is fully formed in us and we bring forth fruit meet for repentance The Woman then commendeth one birth and Christ enjoyneth another and as Socrates taught his scholars so our Saviour leadeth the Woman 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from like to like from the admiration of a temporal to the knowledge of the spiritual birth from one Blessedness to another And thus the matter and substance of Christ's words affordeth us these three things 1. conceptum a kind of Conception by hearing of the word 2. partum a kind of Birth or Bringing-forth by keeping it 3. gaudium Joy after the delivery not temporal but spiritual even that Blessedness which every good Christian is as capable of as the Mother of Christ and which is laid up not onely for her who bare him in her womb but also for all those who keep him in their heart Yea rather saith Christ blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it These be the parts of my Text and of these in order Blessed is the womb that bare thee c. saith the Woman And that which occasioned and moved her thus to lift up her voice was the power of Christ's Works and Words When she saw him mighty in both when she saw the wonders that he wrought and how mightily he convinced the Scribes and Pharisees when he had confirmed his doctrine by miracles and his miracles by reason she plainly discovered the finger by which they were wrought and without any further deliberation she pronounceth him a most divine and excellent person To cure diseases with a word or with a touch to cast out devils to raise the dead could not proceed from any other power then his who doth whatsoever he will both in heaven and in earth And to this end it hath pleased God to give testimony to his truth as it were by a voice from heaven that we might believe and acknowledge that truth for the confirmation whereof such things were wrought before the sun and the people as none but God can do For what our Saviour speaketh of that voice from heaven which was as thunder John 12.28 29 30. is most true of this outward testimony This voice from heaven cometh not because of Him but for our sakes who are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Luke 24.25 slow of heart to believe and will not be induced to subscribe to the truth unless we see it written with the sun-beams unless it be made plain and manifest by signs and wonders Jo. 4.48 And such a plain and clear testimony the Jew had need of For all changes especially of Religion are with difficulty it being proper to men to be jealous of every breath as of an enemy if it blow in opposition to ought they have already received and though it be the truth to suspect it because it breatheth from a contrary coast And therefore he that will remove the mind from that which it hath once laid hold on and wherein it is already settled must bring with him more then ordinary motives and inducements even such as may work a kind of conquest upon the Understanding Now the end of Christ's coming was to make such a change to alter what long-before had been established by God himself to rent the veil of the Temple in twain to abolish the law of Ceremonies which God by the hand of Moses had given vetera concutere to sound the trumpet and with it to shake
Joh. 2.6 when in all our carriage and behaviour we can truly say Sic oculos sic Ille manus sic ora ferebat Thus did or thus said my Saviour The lives and actions of men are subject to errour and the best of God's Saints in all ages have had their falls David is said to have been a man after God's own heart yet if we should follow David in all his paths he would lead us into those two fearful precipices Adultery and Murther Peter was a great Apostle but if we should imitate all Peter's actions we should not follow Christ but deny him In our imitation therefore of men we must observe the Apostles Caution here in the Text and be followers of the Saints even as they also are followers of Christ and no further When they go awry from Christ's example we must leave them be they what they will and carefully follow the presedent that our Lord hath set us He is the Way and the Truth and the Life He never went astray himself Joh. 14.6 neither can he mislead us He will be unto us as the Pillar of the cloud and of sire was to the Israelites a sure Guide to the Land of promise to the heavenly Canaan If we keep our eye still fixed upon him and heedfully and constantly follow his conduct we shall walk in the wayes of Truth and Peace walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called worthy of the name whereby we are called CHRISTIANS we shall give testimony of the truth and sincerity of our Faith and perform the promise and profession made at our Baptism which is to follow the example of our Saviour Christ and be made like unto him we shall adorn the Gospel honour our Master and glorifie our Father which is in heaven in a word we shall guide others in the way to happiness by our good example shining among them as lights in the world and we our selves having served our own generation by the will of God shall in the regeneration and the times of restitution of all things be received by him whom we have followed into those mansions of rest and glory which he is gone to prepare for us that where he is there we may be also The Eight and Thirtieth SERMON PROV XXVIII 13. He that covereth his sinnes shall not prosper but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy Rom. 12.16 Prov. 3.7 Prov. 26.12 BE not wise in your own conceits It is St. Paul's counsel And it is the Wisemans counsel also And he giveth the reason for it Seest thou a wise man in his own conceit there is more hope of a fool then of him more hope of him that hath no use of reason then of him that hath and abuseth it that draweth it down to vile and base offices that maketh it ministerial and serviceable to his lusts that first imployeth it as a midwife to bring forth that sinne which his lust hath conceived and then when it hath brought it forth maketh it as a nurse to cherish it first to find out wayes to mature and perfect it and then to cast a shadow to cover it Certainly there is more hope of a fool then of him For a fool setteth not up to himself any end and so is not frustrate or defeated of it But he that is wise in his own conceit is the more unhappy fool of the two for he proposeth to himself an end and doth not only fail and come short of it but falleth and is bruised on a contrary He promiseth to himself glory and meeteth with shame he looketh towards Prosperity and is made miserable he flattereth himself with hope of Life and is swallowed up by death he smileth and pleaseth and applaudeth himself and perisheth he lifteth up himself on high and falleth and is buried in the mire and filth of his own conceits That which he seeketh flyeth from him and that which he runneth from overtaketh him The truth of which hath been visible in many particulars and written as it were with the bloud of those who have sought death in the errour of their lives and here Solomon hath manifested it in this Proverb or wise sentence which I have read unto you For how happy do we think our selves if we can sin and then hide and cover our sin from our own and others eyes and yet Wisdom it self hath said He that doth so shall not prosper What a disgrace do we count it to confess and forsake sin and yet he that doth so shall find mercy Our wayes are not as God's wayes That which we gather for a flower is a noysome and baneful weed that which we make our joy is turned into sorrow that which we apply to heal doth more wound our balm is poyson and our Paradise Hell Ye have heard of the wisedom of Solomon Hearken to it in this particular which crosseth the wisedom of this world He that covereth his sins shall not prosper but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy Which words teach us these two things 1. The Danger of covering or excusing our sins He that covereth his sins shall not prosper 2. The Remedy or way to avoid this danger but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy The first we shall especially insist upon and shew it you in respect 1. of God 2. of our selves First the danger of covering our sins appeareth in this that sin cannot be covered cannot admit of excuse Omnis excusatio sui aequitate nititur say the Civilians All excuse is founded on equity and none is good but so far as equity commendeth it As far then as Sin may be covered or excused so far it is not sin at least not lyable to punishment For our own experience will tell us that where excuse with reason may run there it exempteth the accused both from fault and punishment We read Levit. 10. Vers 19. that when Aaron's sons had not eaten the goat of the sin-offering according to the Law and Aaron had made that reasonable excuse which we find that his sorrow for his two sons Nadab and Abihu had made him unfit to eat of those Holy things vvhich they vvere to do rejoycing Deut. 12.7 Deut. 26.14 and vvhen they brought their sanctified things they vvere to say I have not eat thereof in my mourning vvhen he had made this excuse the Text telleth us When Moses heard that he was content And this is the difference betwixt Moral and Ceremonial Laws Aliud sunt imagines saith Tertullian aliud definitiones Imagines prophetant definitiones gubernant We are governed not by Ceremonies vvhich pass away as a shadow but by Laws vvhich are immutable and indispensable Ceremonies are arbitrary and not only Reason but God himself doth in this case frame excuses and putteth them in our mouth and covereth what deformity soever they may present to men that cannot but misinterpret what they understand not David in his Hunger eateth of the shew-bread
I need not be large in their character you may know them by their language I fast twice in the we e. They fast and they pray and they hear and they believe and they are assured of heaven They are and they alone The rest stand before them as Publicans or excommunitate persons Can any good thing can any Prophet come out of Nazareth Can any know any good or do any good that is not of that faction Enlarge thy phylacteries if thou canst thou Pharisee and paint that sepulchre of rotten bones vvhich thou art vvith more art and coriosity then these blow thy trumpet louder or draw thy face to more figures then these Lord what is now become of Religion It was placed in judgment and mercy it is now managed with cruelty and craft It vvas committed to every nation and all people it is now shut up in a party It vvas seated in the Will and Understanding it is now whirled about in the Phansie It vvas a wedding-garment it is now made a cloke of maliciousness It vvas once true He that loved Christ and kept his commandments was his Disciple but he is now no good Christian who is so if he be not so after such a mode and such a fashion We see it in the Church of Rome No salvation out of her territories God grant vve feel it not nearer home Beloved he that shall look abroad and vvell consider the conversation of many may be tempted perhaps to an unworthy thought that either there is no Religion or that Religion is nothing For vvherein is it placed In a Fast and that to our ovvn vvills in Hearing and that but vain in Prayer and that many times but babling in Faith and that but dead in Formalities and Shews It s sound is gone through the earth and it is lost in the noise Religion vve fight for and Religion vve fight against Religion vve extoll and Religion vve shame We cry it up and tread it under foot and are never less religious then vvhen the Pharisee speaketh vvithin us and telleth the vvorld and maketh it known to all the people that we are so Non apparemus mali ut plus malignemur We will not appear evil that vve may do the more evil seem very good that vve may be vvorse and vvorse Let us take an Inventory of our Jewels and our best things let us set down our virtues We fast vvith all our sins about us full of iniquity and many times feed it vvith a fast We fast and make it a prologue sometimes to a Comedy sometimes to a Tragedy and at once call down judgments and deprecate them humble our selves before God and provoke him We hear and that is all and vvould to God that vvere all But here that curse is upon it Deut. 28.38 We carry much seed out but gather little in We hear much and remember little and practise less nay vve practise the contrary to that vvhich vve heard vvith so much attention and delight We pray for one thing and desire another We make it a trade a craft and occupation to take indeed a pearl but not the kingdom of heaven I but vve believe I am unwilling to say Faith is a ceremony but in many it is not so much and signifieth nothing at all a meteor hanging in the phansie vvhich portendeth nothing but sterility and barrenness rather a scutcheon for shew then a buckler to quench a fiery dart We call Christ a foundation and we build upon him We lay our cruelty upon him who was a Lamb our malice upon him who prayed who died for his enemies our pride upon him who made himself of no reputation our hypocrisie upon him who was Truth it self and our rebellion upon him who was a pattern of obedience We believe in Christ and crucifie him again For this the wrath of God is revealed from heaven Rom. 1 1â— because we hold the truth of God in unrighteousness For this his Anger is not turned away but his hand is stretched out still not so much for the breach as for the contempt of his word and commandments not so much tor our offending him as for our dallying with him not so much for our sin as for our hypocrisie not onely for our obedience but for our hearing not onely for our defects but for our devotion not onely for our infidelity but for our faith not onely for our intemperance but for our fast For what can provoke God more then to see such pearls trode under foot by swine I do not mention paying of tithes for neither the Law of God nor of man can defend them nor any thing else that looketh like a prey And therefore for conclusion let me bespeak you as Christ did his Disciples Take heed of the leven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisie Luke 12. for it will leven and sowre the whole lump the whole body of your Religion taint and poison your Fast frustrate your Hearing turn your Prayer into sin make your Faith vain and leave you in your sins The One and Fortieth SERMON PART I. JAMES I. 25. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work this man shall be blessed in his deed THere is nothing more talked of then the Gospel nothing more wilfully mistook nothing more frequently abused The sound of it is gone through the earth is heard from the East to the West but men have set and tuned it to their own lusts and humours No Psalm will please us but a Psalm of Mercy For Judgment is a harsh note Mercy and Judgment though David put them together in his Song with us are such discords that they yield no harmony Mercy and Judgment Law and Liberty though they may meet and delight us though they must meet to save us yet we set them at distance cleave to the one and hate the other please and delight our selves under the shadow of Mercy till Judgment falleth upon as a tempest to overwhelm us loose our Liberty in our embraces forfeit Mercy by laying hold of it and the Gospel of Christ is made the Gospel of man nay saith S. Augustine Evangelium Diaboli the Gospel of the Devil himself This our blessed Apostle had discovered in the dispersed Tribes to whom he wrote That they were very ready to publish and magnifie the Gospel that they loved to speak of it that they loved to hear of it that they were perfect in their Creed that Faith was set up aloft and crowned even when it was dead that they did believe and were partial that they did believe and despise the poor that they did believe and blaspheme that worthy Name by which they were called And therefore to draw them back from this so dangerous a deviation Vers 19. he exhorteth them first to hear the word of truth that he disliketh not but then secondly to receive it into their hearts
Powers and Principalities Laws and Precepts and all that is named of God Ambition maketh Laws Jura perjura Swear and forswear Arise kill and eat Covetousness maketh Laws condemneth us to the mines to dig and sweat Quocunque modo rem Gather and lay up Come not within the reach of Omri's statutes of humane Laws and you need not fear any Law of Christ. Private Interest maketh Laws and indeed is the Emperour of the world and maketh men slaves to crouch and bow under every burthen to submit to every Law of man though it enjoyn to day what it did forbid yesterday to raise up our heads and then duck at every shadow that cometh over us but we can see no such formidable power in the Royal Law of Christ because it breatheth not upon it to promote and uphold it but looketh as an enemy that would cast it down biddeth us deny our selves which we do every day for our lusts for our honour for our profit but cannot do it for Christ or for that crown which is laid up for those that do it Thus every thing hath power over us which may destroy us but Christ is not hearkned to nor those his Laws which may make us wise unto salvation For we are too ready to believe what some have been bold to teach that there are no such Laws at all in the Gospel Therefore in the last place let us cast this root of bitterness out of our hearts let us look upon it as a most dangerous and baneful errour an errour which hath brought that abomination of desolation into the world and into the lives and manners of Christians which have made them stink amongst the inhabitants of the earth amongst Jews and Pagans and Infidels which tremble to behold those works of darkness which they see every day not onely done but defended by those who call themselves the children of light Because in that name we bite and devour one another for this they despise the Gospel of Christ because we boast of it all the day long and make use of it as a Licence or Letters patent to be worse then they riot it in the light beat our fellow-servants defraud and oppress them which they do not in darkness and in the shadow of death The first Christians called the Gospel legem Christianam the Christian Law and so lived as under a Law so lived that nothing but the name was accused But the latter times have brought forth subtle Divines that have disputed away the Law and now there is scarce any thing left commendable but the name A Gospeller and worse then a Turk or Pagan a Gospeller and a Revenger a Gospeller and a Libertine a Gospeller and a Schismatick a Gospeller and a Deceiver a Gospeller and a Traitor a Gospeller that will be under no Law a Gospeller that is all for Love and Mercy and nothing for Fear I may say the Devil is a better Gospeller for he believeth and trembleth And indeed this is one of the Devils subtilest engines veritatem veritate concutere to shake and beat down one Truth with another to bury our Duty in the Good news to hide the Lord in the Saviour and the Law in the covering of Mercy to make the Gospel supplant it self that it may be of no effect to have no sound heard but that of Imputative righteousness From hence that irregularity and disobedience amongst Christians that liberty and peace in sin For when Mercy waiteth so close upon us and Judgment is far out of our sight we walk on pleasantly in forbidden paths and sin with the less regret sin and fear not pardon lying so near at hand To conclude then Let us not deceive our selves and think that there is nothing but Mercy and Pardon in the Gospel and so rely upon it till we commit those sins which shall be pardoned neither in this world nor in the world to come Nemo promittat sibi quod non promittit Evangelium saith Augustine Let no man make the promise larger then the Gospel hath made it nor so presume on the Grace of God as to turn it into wantonness so extol it as to depress it so trust to Mercy as to forfeit it but look into the Gospel and behold it in its own shape and face as pardoning sin and forbidding sin as a royal Release and a royal Law And look upon Christ the authour and finisher of our faith as a Jesus to save us Psal 2. and a Lord to command us as preaching peace and preaching a Law Rom. 8.3 condemning sin in his flesh dying that sin might dye and teaching us to destroy it in our selves In a word let us so look into the Gospel that it may be unto us the savour of life unto life and not the savour of death unto death so look upon Christ here that he may be our Lord to govern us and our Jesus to save us that we may be subject to his Laws and so be made capable of his mercy that we may acknowledge him to be our Lord and he acknowledge us before his Father that Death may lose its sting and Sin its strength and we may be saved in the last day through Jesus Christ our Lord. The Two and Fortieth SERMON PART II. JAMES I. 25. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work this man shall be blessed in his deed THat the Precepts of the Gospel do bind us as Laws ye have heard already and how the Doctrine of the Gospel is a Law We must in the next place see how it is a perfect Law And first That is perfect saith the Philosopher cui nihil adimi nec adjici potest from which nothing can be taken and to which nothing can be added Such is the Gospel You cannot adde to it you cannot take from it one lota or tittle If any shall adde unto these things Rev. 22.18 God shall adde to him the plagues that are written in this book And if any shall take away from them God shall take away his part out of the book of life There needeth no second hand to supply it and that hand deserveth to be cut off that shall corrupt or alter it For look upon the End which is Blessedness There you have it drawn out in the fairest lines that flesh and bloud can read in as large a representation as our humane nature is capable of Then view the Means to bring us to that end They are plainly exprest and set out there in such a character that we may run and read them open to our understanding exciting our faith raising our hope and even provoking us to action There is nothing which we ought to know nothing which we must believe nothing which we may hope for nothing which concerneth us to do nothing which may lift us up to happiness and carry us to the end but it is written